Summer Myatt
In February 2021, the Department of Defense released its software modernization strategy, which defines the department’s broad goal of accelerating the speed of delivery for critical software.
“The Department’s competitive advantage, today and tomorrow, is reliant on strategic insight, proactive innovation, and effective technology integration enabled through software capabilities,” according to the strategy’s foreword.
The strategy centers around a department-wide cloud migration – the DOD cloud environment is cited as the “foundation” for software modernization, and the strategy describes the department’s priority of transitioning from “disparate cloud efforts to a structured, integrated, and cost-effective cloud portfolio.”
Notably, the software strategy has effectively replaced the Defense Department’s cloud strategy, released in 2018, by combining both priorities into a singular effort that takes an enterprise approach.
Danielle Metz, deputy chief information officer for information enterprise at the DOD, says cloud migration and software modernization are actually closely linked.
“I don’t think it really makes a lot of sense to separate software modernization from cloud adoption because it would imply that software could be modernized without cloud,” Metz said during a Federal News Network event.
She explained that the department began a strategic shift in late 2019 that focused on software modernization as the “primary driver” of cloud migration. This combination of efforts, Metz shared, was sparked in part because the mission impact of the standalone cloud strategy was not immediately evident to the personnel tasked with carrying it out.
To learn more about the relationship between cloud migration and the Defense Department’s new software vision, join the Defense Software Modernization Forum on May 17. Sign for up the event on the ExecutiveBiz Events page.
Robert Vietmeyer, director for cloud and software modernization for the DOD, will serve as the forum’s keynote speaker. Registrations are open now!
