5 4 constant hardware maintenance and upgrades. The present network architecture has inherent limitations that prevent it from accommodating rapid data growth and responding to changes in tasking or mission. This is partially due to the security technology available at the time the network was designed. But times have changed. For an example of transformative change, look at how virtualization fundamentally changed infrastructure capacity and cost. Virtual machines exponentially increased the power and efficiency of servers, which then rippled out and changed how data centers were constructed. This created the foundation of the migration to cloud computing. Suddenly companies could build out their networks faster and at far less cost, while developing new products and services much faster. First computing, then storage moved out of its separate silo and became something delivered as a service, as opposed to proprietary hardware. Networking was the final silo to evolve to a Networking- as-a-Service (NaaS) model. These changes didn’t happen overnight. They moved forward in steady increments that can be replicated by the DoD. Security technology has also evolved greatly over the past decade. When virtual private networks (VPNs) first came into use, there was concern about data leakage. Today, AT&T provides enterprise-grade dedicated connections at the Layer 3 networking level, using Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), delivering security with massive scalability. The AT&T network is in 190 countries and sees an average of five billion vulnerability scans every day—meaning the company sees what the bad guys are doing before anyone else. “The network the Army has is not the network it needs to confront the changing face of warfare.” Maj. Gen. Bruce Crawford, CIO // U.S. Army // August 2017 LEADING THE FUTURE