As the Army continues to move toward becoming an information-age
force, its demands for networking tools and training have increased
at a commensurate rate.
To
keep up with those needs, the Army in July awarded a $152 million
contract to Lockheed Martin Corp., based in Bethesda, Md., to manage
the service’s four-year-old enterprise web portal, Army Knowledge
Online.
“The impetus was to make this capability available to industries
to let them tell us, what are some new solutions out there, how
can we make this better…and hopefully doing it at less cost,”
said Col. Taylor Chasteen, product manager for AKO in the Army’s
program executive office for enterprise information systems.
AKO serves 1.8 million users, with 300,000 people logging on daily,
said officials. It’s one of the largest corporate intranet
portals known in the world, according to Autonomy Corp., which produces
infrastructure software for the enterprise.
“AKO is a wonderful vehicle, and the Army has yet to realize
its full potential,” said Chasteen. “Part of our job
here is to stay in touch with industry, to stay aware of tools and
technologies that could be incorporated into the portal at some
point in time.”
The suite of offerings that AKO provides its users include the
Army’s sole unified directory, e-mail, instant messaging,
chat rooms, file storage and document collaboration, said officials.
“We like to compare ourselves to Yahoo,” said Lt. Col.
Kenneth Blakely, chief of operations for AKO.
Like Yahoo and other commercial web portals, AKO offers a wide
range of services that is tailored to individuals, said Blakely.
In addition to accessing online news and Army announcements, users
also can view personal information and records pertaining to education,
training, finance and health. Active-duty soldiers and reservists
are required to complete a number of online courses, such as a new
mandatory accident avoidance course, which they can fulfill via
AKO.
Groups within the service, too, can find or create niches on AKO.
“Any organization above the battalion level can have its
own web presence,” said Blakely. “They can have their
own coloring, branding and everything else.”
The Army Test and Evaluation Center, for example, has begun migrating
its presence into AKO, he said.
Users can access AKO anywhere, at any time, as long as they have
a browser, password and connection, said officials.
Lt. Col. Mike Bridges, chief of architecture, said he used AKO
every single day during a trip to Iraq in the fall.
“It was nice to be able to pick up and travel around the
globe, and have access to everything that I would have back on my
office desktop,” he said. “That is the true benefit
of net-centric.”
While in Iraq, Bridges witnessed soldiers in the 42nd Infantry
Division using AKO.
“They use nothing but AKO for services of document sharing,
posting and e-mail. It is a very useful tool for soldiers who are
doing the work over there,” said Bridges.
After Hurricane Katrina occurred, the Army continuously put up
content relating to relief efforts and opened up discussion forums
on the topic.
“It was very important for folks deployed to Iraq to have
access to hurricane information via AKO,” said Chasteen.
Officials said they want to develop collaboration tools, such as
white-boarding, application sharing and web conferencing, that would
enable users to meet and share information virtually. In addition,
they want to develop the concept of eliminating paper from the force
through the forms content management program.
The project has not been without controversy. Shortly after the
Army awarded Lockheed with the AKO contract in July, CherryRoad
Technologies and EDS Corp. filed protests with the Government Accountability
Office, over interpretation and best value, respectively.
GAO denied the protests in October. A Lockheed spokesman said the
company’s plans will move ahead once it receives instructions
to begin work. Until then, the company cannot disclose any details.
In the initial press release announcing the contract award, Lockheed
said, “The team will design and implement a new AKO architecture,
one that will significantly reduce operating costs, bolster performance
and reliability, and set the stage for an evolution to net-centric
operations.” Lockheed will lead a team of subcontractors,
including Science Applications International Corp. and Computer
Sciences Corp., in managing and administering AKO.
AKO was deployed in 2001 using an enterprise portal produced by
Appian, said officials.
“When it started out, it was a dynamic web page with a lot
of capability,” said Blakely. “Back in 2001, you couldn’t
just buy a piece of portal technology off the street the way you
can today,” he added.
AKO, based at Fort Belvoir, Va., now runs on version 3.0 of the
Appian portal. The network is hosted on 300 Unix servers and has
73 terabytes of raw storage space. Officials said there are plans
to expand the servers. But they declined to comment on the intranet’s
operating costs, citing Defense Department policy.
People are nervous about enterprise solutions, said Chasteen. They
worry that AKO might not be secure enough, available enough, scalable
enough, reliable enough, he said.
“I think we have addressed all of those issues. We are confident
in the architecture to provide all of those,” he said.
However, conveying that message to potential users remains a challenge.
“There is a population out there that we haven’t reached
yet,” consisting of mostly civilians and retirees, said Chasteen.