3 2 CHRIS SMITH has seen the public sector IT mission from every possible angle. Smith, Vice President of Technology for AT&T Public Sector, spent 25 years in the Air Force and National Guard and served as CIO for Joint Forces (Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines) within Joint Special Operations Task Force in the Philippines. On the federal civilian side, he served as CIO at the Department of Agriculture, overseeing one of the largest federal migrations to cloud computing. He also led the first civilian agency test of Einstein 3 technology to improve cybersecurity. Now, Smith wants to put the best private sector network in the world at the disposal of the Department of Defense. “The geopolitical environment has changed, with near-peer adversaries around the world sprinting forward in the development of their IT capabilities. The military needs to move beyond the old mindset of studying an IT challenge for two years and deploying new technology in ten,” Smith said at a recent event sponsored by Government Executive. “Today’s military requires a more powerful and flexible platform that allows mission requirements to dictate the connectivity, not network constraints.” Smith’s background puts him in a strong position to assist with the DoD network transformation challenge. He’s successfully implemented change in military and federal civilian organizations, and now he leads technology for the nearly $15 billion business. Recent demands for mobility, big data, and the Internet of Things, coupled with technology transformations brought on by the data center evolution and cloud services, are driving transformative changes across the technology spectrum. The DoD currently operates approximately 15,000 separate networks, which are often dominated by older hardware and proprietary standards. Most of the technology was implemented at least 15 years ago, prior to macro trends such as virtualization, cloud computing and the move to mobile—all of which have fundamentally evolved private sector networks. These transformed networks truly change what’s possible from a performance and flexibility standpoint. There is an expression well known in engineering circles— “I can give it to you faster, better or cheaper, but you only get two out of the three.” Today for the first time, software-based networks offer IT leaders all three aspects of the equation—greatly enhanced networking performance, speed to deployment and lower costs. “The world has changed, and the DoD should look to leverage proven, best-of-breed commercial services wherever appropriate,” says Smith. “The key is strong leadership and focusing on the 10 to 20 percent of time that connectivity must be 100 percent ensured in remote, denied environments. Using properly developed software, virtualized network functionality can be more secure than purpose-built hardware and far less brittle.” Operational demands are forcing the DoD to change its entire network LEADING THE FUTURE “Using properly developed software, virtualized network functionality can be more secure than purpose-built hardware and far less brittle.” “The geopolitical environment has changed, with near-peer adversaries around the world sprinting forward in the development of their IT capabilities.”