Army's cloud office slated to be fully operational in March

The Army's enterprise cloud office is slated to fully stand up by the end of March.

The Enterprise Cloud Management Office, which was initially established in November, is on its way to being fully operational and is currently focused on talent recruitment, Army CIO Lt. Gen. Bruce Crawford told reporters Jan. 21 at AFCEA's Army IT Day.

Paul Puckett III was tapped to be the cloud office's director in November, after being Pivotal Software's CTO for its federal business. On Jan. 21, he was officially brought on under the senior executive service, Tier 2, Crawford said.

The cloud office will also help manage cloud hosting environments, identifying what's available and suitable for migration, and common shared services, such as cybersecurity, identity and access management.

Talent is Puckett's chief priority, said Crawford who mentioned the new office has already selected a cybersecurity lead.

The office's potential full operating capacity date comes a year after first announcing its plans and as the Army expects to invest nearly $1 billion in cloud and data migration efforts by fiscal 2023.

Crawford said the office would likely stay small personnel-wise, indicating that its focus will be "less about numbers and more about capabilities" and skills needed to integrate cloud adoption throughout the Army.

The Army previously lacked insight into its cloud enterprise and is hopeful that will change with the new cloud office and with Puckett onboard.

"We needed to centralize I'll call it oversight -- but not control -- of all things cloud across the enterprise," Crawford told conference goers.

The tech chief wouldn't divulge how many cloud contracts the Army had but said the new office is intended to be a resource to help onboard entities looking at data and cloud migrations. 

"We've got a lot of users who want to migrate to the cloud," Crawford said. "So if you want to move, the first thing you've got to know is what's available to move ... and so [Puckett] knows what enterprise contracts we already have in place so that the user doesn't have to pay for it twice."

This article first appeared on FCW, a partner site of Defense Systems.