Intelligence in the cloud: Lockheed Martin and Esri cloud deployment enables geospatial information sharing across the IC

Bethesda, MD-based Lockheed Martin and Esri announced February 17 that they have deployed commercial software to the Amazon Web Services Commercial Cloud Services (C2S) environment for the first time with an intelligence community customer, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), in a move that enables government agencies to better share geospatial intelligence.

The deployment of the portal for Esri’s ArcGIS geographic information system (GIS) provides a single environment for analysts to securely organize and share data throughout the intelligence community and Department of Defense. It’s also the foundational step in consolidating multiple geospatial intelligence portals into the single NGA-provided portal, resulting in technology and license cost savings.

This is NGA’s second pioneering step in the cloud, after the agency moved their Map of the World application to the C2S environment late last year.

“Deploying Esri’s Portal for ArcGIS to a commercial cloud environment securely organizes existing data and facilitates collaboration across intelligence agencies,” said Jason O’Connor, vice president of Analysis and Mission Solutions for Lockheed Martin. “This cloud implementation also further shapes the government’s processes for architecting and implementing enterprise class services within a cloud environment.”

ArcGIS connects users to maps and geographic information. Users can create and view maps, compile geographic data, analyze mapped information and share geographic information in a range of applications.

“Working with Lockheed Martin and the NGA on this strategic implementation for national security is particularly meaningful,” said Jack Dangermond, Esri president. “It recognizes the importance of consolidating geospatial intelligence information into a single portal to facilitate rapid situational awareness and response by our intelligence community.”

Lockheed Martin and Esri have partnered for eight years on the Geospatial-Intelligence Visualization Services (GVS) program, which helped NGA and the Intelligence Community achieve this cloud migration milestone. The Total Application Services for Enterprise Requirements (TASER) GVS contract vehicle, which was originally awarded in 2012, conveys geospatial visualization context and analytic capabilities to warfighters, intelligence officers and policy-makers through classified and unclassified computer networks.

Source: Lockheed Martin Corp