Army Kicks Off Enterprise-IT-as-a-Service Pilot Program

The U.S. Army plans to establish a pilot program that would deliver Enterprise IT as a Service (EITaaS) to its 288 bases and other operating locations worldwide, according to an April 5 announcement. The Air Force set up a similar project in 2018.

The services under EITaaS would provide commercial delivery and management support from a protected enterprise network directly to Army users operating on the Department of Defense Information Network-Army, known as DoDIN-A.

Over the next three years, the Army would scale its plans to conduct EITaaS pilots at as many as 15 installations.

• Fiscal year 2019: The pilot will begin at one small installation, one large installation and one extra-large installation, with 2 additional locations under consideration. The Army has not specified the locations yet.
• FY 2020: The pilot will move to five more locations: two small installations, one medium-sized installation, one large installation and one extra-large installation.
• FY 2021: The pilot will add four large installations and one small installation.

The Army’s base classifications are: small (a workforce of 6,000 or less), medium (6,000-15,000), large (15,000-20,000), and extra-large (20,000 or more).

The Army says it’s establishing the pilot program because both its unclassified and classified enterprise networks can’t meet the service’s immediate and future warfighting requirements to enable multi-domain operations by 2028 at the current pace of investment and modernization. The Army is considering using Other Transaction Authority (OTA) to create EITaaS prototypes at the 15 installations.

The plan would follow a similar Air Force project that in September 2018 awarded two OTAs to create an experimental secure commercial data and voice network that would provide access to Defense Department data and applications from DOD facilities, as well as enable access for mobile and remotely located users. AT&T Inc. was awarded an $87 million OTA and Microsoft Corp.was awarded a $34 million OTA for the project.

Click here to set up alerts for Army’s upcoming EITaaS requirements and receive notifications. Responses to the Army’s sources-sought notice are due April 12.

To contact the analyst: Daniel Snyder at dsnyder@bgov.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jodie Morris at jmorris@bgov.com