The Great Migration: DISA’s Reorg and What it Means for COTS Vendors – Part 1
January 14, 2015 3 Comments
by Lloyd McCoy Jr., Consultant
Recently I attended an AFCEA luncheon with Lt. Gen. Ronnie Hawkins, Director of DISA, and several other top leaders in DISA. This event kicked off DISA’s new reorganization. The agency realigned because of complaints they were too slow and cost too much in the areas of “5 Cs”: cyber security, cloud, collaboration, and command and control. The discussion centered on the changes and how it will impact industry. Hawkins guessed by the year’s end, DISA will have ironed out all the kinks commonly associated with reorganizations.
Here’s a look at the major directorates within DISA, who’s in charge and what they’re doing:
has been shifting from the ingrained idea of data center consolidation to data center optimization in an effort to continue to realize efficiencies and reduce costs. When OMB changed the definition of what constituted a data center a few years ago, the number of data centers to be closed dramatically increased from around 1,200 of 3,100 total, to over 7,000 total, making data center closure goals impossible to reach. As a result, we’ve seen a shift from a policy initially emphasizing closures to one that’s demanding increased efficiency out of existing facilities. These consolidation and optimization efforts are part of the government’s “cloud first” approach to reduce IT infrastructure through virtualization of hardware and software and hosting data in private or public clouds.
Last week DISA released a 
Government Sales Insider 