US Military rolls out Google collaboration suite to 180,000-plus personnel

McLEAN, Va. — The U.S. Military has supplied Google Workspace, the search-and-software big’s collaboration suite, to greater than 180,000 personnel within the wake of electronic mail licensing shortfalls and different information-technology dilemmas.

The tally, solely anticipated to develop, comes about six months after the service began quietly testing the constellation of digital instruments with a choose group and three months after it started publicly rolling it out to troops.

Military Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo on Jan. 12 mentioned Workspace, which incorporates electronic mail, chat and storage capabilities, has thus far been profitable. Requested by C4ISRNET and Military Occasions if there have been any important hiccups, glitches or compatibility points, Camarillo mentioned: “None that I’ve been made conscious of. In any respect.”

The Google platform was, early within the course of, thought of a front-running choice to serve troops who misplaced entry to official electronic mail accounts amid a uneven change from Protection Enterprise Electronic mail and its mail.mil addresses to the Military 365 system, involving Microsoft merchandise.

When the service transitioned to Military 365, it moved to an individual-license mannequin, however shortly realized there wouldn’t be sufficient Microsoft licenses to cowl all of its workforce. Officers initially thought of having junior personnel forgo official electronic mail entry, however that plan was dismissed in favor of an “alternate electronic mail resolution.”

The answer got here into focus when Google introduced in July its Workspace package deal achieved IL4 authorization, a safety requirement associated to the dealing with of essential infrastructure, protection, intelligence, finance and proprietary enterprise data. It had beforehand achieved FedRAMP Excessive authorization.

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Such {qualifications} created the trail for Military utilization; Google mentioned as a lot in an October weblog submit that additionally disclosed 250,000 customers would obtain credentials. Workspace was beforehand adopted by the Protection Innovation Unit and the Air Drive Analysis Laboratory, amongst different federal entities.

“The federal government has requested for extra alternative in cloud distributors who can help its missions,” the corporate mentioned, “and Google Workspace will equip at this time’s navy with a number one suite of collaboration instruments to get their work achieved.”

The Military’s outgoing chief data officer, Raj Iyer, advised Military Occasions in October that sure organizations inside the Military are receiving Workspace as a result of they’re extra “self-contained” and should not require the identical degree of cross-command and cross-service collaboration obtainable by Military 365.

Google and Microsoft compete inside and outdoors the protection area, and have been in late 2022 picked by the Pentagon, alongside Amazon and Oracle, for its hallmark Joint Warfighting Cloud Functionality contract, a $9 billion successor to the Joint Enterprise Protection Infrastructure program.

Whereas the partial adoption of Workspace represents a brand new entrance between the tech giants of their conflict for Protection Division {dollars}, some observers — contained in the Military in addition to the personal sector — fear about collateral injury. Juggling personnel between totally different packages, and the associated administrative complexities, may create complications for the Military sooner or later.