WEST 2026 — The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is changing how it delivers cloud services to provided faster capabilities to warfighters due to the pace of conflict, an official announced today.
“In order to address that change our leadership … has developed what we are calling the DISA Cloud Environment,” Nolan Brown, technical director for DISA’s Hybrid Cloud Solutions, said at the annual WEST conference.
“The DISA cloud environment is our attempt to modernize what we deliver to the warfighter through a host of tools and products … to accelerate the speed of deployment for new capabilities where it’s needed, when it’s needed, and what exactly is needed,” he said.
Brown explained that historically support was provided through infrastructure hosting, hosting as a service and other services. But that model does not fit what the warfighter needs today as conflict continues to move faster, and the agency must adapt to that.
This “smart cloud journey” will provide the right solutions to the right locations at the right time, but won’t be a one size fits all. Brown acknowledged there is no right solution for every application and mission or right location for every service and application.
The DISA cloud environment — which is not a single product, but a set of umbrella services — will consist of three main on ramps: classic, private and commercial hosting. Classic hosting has been a core competency for DISA through its Hosting and Compute Center.
On the private side, while DISA has been seeking to grow its private offerings through services like Stratus, Brown said they need to take their offerings up a notch significantly.
Brown also highlighted how DISA has embraced the need for commercial cloud through the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract, which he said has been a “tremendous success” and part of their roadmap.
