The US National Security Agency (NSA) will launch the agency’s hybrid cloud system by the end of 2020. The Hybrid Compute Initiative (HCI) will be a two-pronged approach to hybrid cloud computing, NSA Chief Information Officer Greg Smithberger said on 5 August. John Sherman, the CIO of the IC, started the plan for NSA’s Hybrid Compute Initiative (HCI) at an AFCEA NOVA conference as an evolution of the agency’s current GovCloud environment.
For NSA operations
The main goal of HCI is to meet the agency’s requirements for capacity and scalability by focusing on operationalizing classified, commercial-based cloud computing capabilities. The HCI will depend on vendors for managed services like hardware as a service and “bulk-priced” cloud computing.
NSA Chief Information Officer Greg Smithberger said,
“The optimized commercial cloud networks, acquired through acquisition bulk-buys by NSA, will constitute the “next generation of IC GovCloud on top of classified cloud services. The second prong of the HCI will focus on required networking and computing elements for NSA operations that cannot be supported by commercial-based cloud networks.”