The Defense Department has in recent months enacted new policies aimed at accelerated adoption of commercial cloud, even as officials seek to strike a balance between security, savings and efficiency.

Much of DoD's new cloud policy centers on giving more power to the military services to buy their own commercial cloud services. The policy also speeds acquisition by federating the process and, officials hope, lowers the cost by ramping up competition.

The developments in cloud policy of late have been spearheaded by DoD CIO Terry Halvorsen, who is looking beyond just the military when it comes to commercial cloud. He's eyeing broader government cloud policy – and the effects his efforts may have in the wider context – but Halvorsen also is looking outside traditional military and government boundaries.

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To that end, Halvorsen is evaluating the concept of commercial cloud providers operating within DoD facilities. For example, a so-called "commercial data distribution center" located on a military base could serving both DoD and non-DoD customers. Doing so would provide military-grade security for data and applications belonging to DoD, as well as those of non-government entities – say, financial institutions.

Currently, at least one cloud vendor operates in federal space – Hewlett Packard for the Navy – but that scenario involves only DoD data.

The on-base commercial cloud center could expand revenue options for commercial cloud providers, driving competition for such contracts and, in turn, better prices for DoD. Halvorsen said there's already demonstrated interest in the community.

"I have received some proposals. I will tell you that, on the proposal basis, they look very attractive…we're going to walk through those, almost like a war game of those proposals, to see how would we accomplish them," Halvorsen said in a March 18 press conference. "Part of that war game would include some of the lawyers saying okay, if I wanted to do this and this is the way I operated, would that cause me any issues with legislation or law? So really, it is now taking some of those proposals, doing a war game through that to walk through what's doable today – do the assumptions about cost hold? Do the assumptions about timelines hold? At the end of that war game, we'll figure out how we go to a pilot type activity."

The "war game" could help flag potential issues, such as regulatory snags. For example, currently there are legal limits on what goods and services can be sold from government installations. Also, the physical security that would be afforded to a commercial provider operating on a military base could give that vendor an unfair advantage in future contract competition – an issue that could require new legislation in the future, Halvorsen noted.

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