The US Army is going back to the drawing board with its enterprise email ambitions (reported by FCW on 28Jun10).
This enterprise email "campaign" is about much more than a single web based email account for soldiers to access anywhere in the world - it may very well be the linchpin for Global Network Enterprise Construct (GNEC) ambitions.
Right now, many Army users potentially have a minimum of 3 email accounts and they may or may not be linked and accessible from anywhere in the world: AKO (web based), local NEC (Outlook or Blackberry), and a tactical Exchange account (TOC based Outlook client). Of course you must necessarily duplicate this to a certain extent for SIPR side. Some AKO/DKO capabilities require yet another username for access. Multiple accounts and lack of access from anywhere goes against everything we know to be capable, productive and required in 2010.
What the Army is really after is a Single Sign On (SSO) - access to multiple enterprise based capabilities. Single email is really a single GNEC username. A singular username enables true cloud computing for information assurance, facilitates mobile adoption and does away with static IP addresses. All this via the rapidly maturing AKO/DKO Portal and a ubiquitous WIN-T network capability while addressing scalability and security. This is the enterprise capability for BPM / Battle Command and End User experience the Army is striving for.
This is a very complex situation and it would certainly benefit from a COTS solution.
End User Pipedream = We end up with something like Zoho.
Josh, good analysis. Frankly, though, I'm glad the Army is relooking the request for proposals. Let's not forget that the original solicitation included a key clause that directed a specific vendor's messaging platform, thus arbitrarily limiting the possible solutions.
ReplyDeleteFurther, I'm not clear why the Army wants to (re-)create an enterprise email capability from the ground-up when we already have an 80-90% solution already on the books -- AKO/DKO. Why create another "one email for life" when we already have one? AKO also has has an SSO capability and client cert support. Seems like it would be more effective to address the remaining 10-20% shortcomings rather than build another service direct from scratch.