One Year Out of DISA’s Reorg – Five C’s Still Shaping IT Priorities Part II

by DOD Manager, Lloyd McCoy

Building on last week’s blog post — which focused on DISA’s Five C’s that continue to play large role in shaping their IT Priorities — lets now turn to the two offices that serve as the focal point for IT investments and programs within DISA: The Development and Business Center (led by Alfred Rivera) and The Implementation and Sustainment Center (led by David Bennett). I’ll also explore some of the directorates tied to each office, which underpin programs and contract opportunities.

1. DEVELOPMENT AND BUSINESS CENTER

The Development and Business Center (DBC) is where DISA determines their approach to developing and deploying new technologies and capabilities, under the framework of the Five C’s mentioned earlier. Industry engagement and demands from the rest of DOD influence their procurement decisions. This Center should be your first stopping point if you want to get your solutions inducted into DISA. Within the DBC are two directorates which control the vast majority of the top programs and contract opportunities within this organization: Services Development (SD) and Infrastructure Development Directorates (ID).

• Service Development Directorate

Led by CAPT Craig Holtslander, this office’s mission is to develop and introduce enterprise services, ranging from portals to global video systems. In addition to enterprise services, solutions offering battlefield situational awareness or tactical information sharing would also roll out through the Services Development Directorate. The Service Development Directorate wants solutions that are secure, lightweight in terms of bandwidth, and easily scalable.

• Infrastructure Development Directorate

Led by Jack Wilmer SD, this office focuses on Enterprise Services. ID is all about modernizing the infrastructure on which those services are hosted. This organization presides over a much broader range of programs than the Services Development Directorate, like cyber analytics, mobility, cloud, and encryption. Cybersecurity is the most important part of this office’s portfolio with three offices dedicated to cyber-related acquisitions. These three offices are focused on providing a layered defense for DOD’s information network, ensuring visibility into everything from the internet access point down to the endpoint.

One thing to remember when meeting with decision makers in this office is that when pitching new tools to the inventory, you need to make sure your solution is architecturally congruent and interoperable with what DOD already has or, better yet, can replace a pre-existing capability.

2. IMPLEMENTATION AND SUSTAINMENT CENTER

While the DBC brings in new technologies, the Implementation and Sustainment Center (ISC) sustains and maintains technologies DISA has already adopted. The ISC is closer to the ground, maintaining and upgrading the enterprise services and the DOD network that DISA infrastructure manages. Discussions with decision makers in this office not only raise awareness of the new solutions are out there to other parts of DISA, but is an important means for industry to become familiar with the challenges DISA faces.  Within the ISC there are the Infrastructure Executive Directorate (IE) and Services Executive Directorate (SE).

• Infrastructure Executive Directorate

Led by Jesse Showers, this office maintains the Defense Information Systems Network (DISN) that hosts all the tools on DOD’s networks. You’ll want to approach this office with a message around how you can create an infrastructure to support the Five C’s I mentioned earlier: cyber, cloud, collaboration, and command and control. More precisely, this means your solution should meet the requirements for upgrading the bandwidth and transport capabilities that are needed to support cyber analytics, collaboration tools, cloud implementation and C2 systems.

• Services Executive Directorate

Led by Jason Martin, this office’s primary focus is sourcing ways to sustain and improve services DISA provides to the Service Branches, COCOMs, and OSD agencies — most of which are hosted in DISA datacenters. They need help from industry in finding out ways to optimize DISA’s data centers so that they can reduce costs and lower the rates it charges the rest of the Department for hosting (which has been a sticking point at times). Opportunities also exist for those who can help the office introduce more automation in how they deploy systems and services to the rest of the Department — especially in a way compliant with DISA’s security guidelines

Since DISA’s reorganization, the agency is focusing less on building and developing their own unique solutions and more on proven solutions that they can translate from industry. Fortunately, because of the central role they play, tapping into DISA puts you right into the stream of DOD top IT priorities because the agency provides much of the underlying services and infrastructure essential to DOD. Anyplace the Department of Defense has a presence, DISA plays some role in the technology used. Getting an “in” with DISA, opens doors to the entire Department.

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