Ministry of Defence publishes Cloud Strategic Roadmap

The Cloud Strategic Roadmap for Defence sets out the MOD's intent to coordinate and accelerate the most ambitious plans for hyperscale cloud adoption across Defence.

The Cloud Strategic Roadmap for Defence articulates how the MOD will coordinate and accelerate the most ambitious plans for hyperscale cloud adoption across Defence, covering the 'Ends' 'Ways' and 'Means' to achieve this. The Roadmap also outlines the current state of Cloud adoption in Defence, focusing on the required changes the MOD needs to make. 

The Roadmap gives an overview of the strategic context, and references the need for a secure, singular, modern Digital Backbone which connects sensors, effectors and deciders across military and business domains, driving integration and interoperability across platforms. One foundational building blocks of the Digital Backbone is the delivery of a secure, hyperscale cloud ecosystem to address the needs across multiple classifications.

The Roadmap's vision out to 2025 is to exploit a world-class hyperscale capability at all classifications – realising the Digital Backbone and unleashing the power of Defence Data. Cloud will enable seamless information and services, available in the right place and at the right time for all Defence users. This will be achieved by adopting MODCloud as a principle, enabling multi-classification cloud and partnering with hyperscalers. 

techUK has summarised the 'Ends' of the Cloud Strategic Roadmap below, which will be delivered by the 'Ways' and 'Means'. 

Ends

Strategic Outcomes: The Roadmap includes 5 Strategic Outcomes which outline Defence’s ambition for Cloud by 2025.

These are:

1. Delivering secure and scalable platforms to gain strategic military advantage:

Pervasively exploiting cloud services enables us to deliver the capability demanded by Defence’s Digital Backbone Strategy. By 2025, the services required by game changing military capabilities will be available across Defence, accelerating our level of cloud consumption. We will take advantage of evergreen solutions to prevent future obsolescence, and to ensure immediate access to the latest technologies, driving the pace of modernisation.

2. Driving innovation through evergreen technologies by default:

Leveraging hyperscale cloud services as a platform enables us to exploit emerging technologies, and consequently allows Defence to stay ahead of adversaries. By 2025, we will use cloud platforms as the foundation on which to build capabilities in big data, advanced analytics, automation, and synthetics. We will spend the majority of our compute expenditure investing in strategic modern platforms, rather than maintaining obsolete legacy platforms.

3. Driving exploitation to realise benefits around efficiency and economic value:

Concentrating our investment in cloud services will improve the user experience, grows skills, and deliver better products faster. By 2025, we will deliver services from an ecosystem of standardised platforms. We will streamline onboarding processes to these cloud platforms, so that benefits can be seamlessly unlocked by Defence.

4. Empowering digital age warfighters through our world-class capabilities:

Warfighting technology in the digital age requires capabilities that exist by default within cloud technologies. By 2025, we will enable the deployment, extension and growth of those capabilities, maximising the survivability and security of services, and exploiting data to provide faster access to curated datasets in deployed locations and at the tactical edge. We will exploit cloud services to seamlessly link sensors to effectors via appropriate decision makers, reducing time to effect.

5. Realising greater benefits by integrating with partners within the cloud ecosystem:

Collaborating with industry and providers will enable us to tackle our biggest technology challenges and accelerate consumption of emerging cloud technologies across Defence, unlocking greater partner investment and commitment. By partnering with the best across Defence, government, and industry, we will be able to bring different perspectives and skillsets that will facilitate game-changing innovation at a scale beyond what we could achieve in silos.

You can read the full version of the Cloud Strategic Roadmap for Defence here.

Fred Sugden

Fred Sugden

Associate Director, Defence and National Security, techUK

 

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