Amazon.mil?

Chip Vanek — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 22:12:08 +0000

Amazon.mil?: "In an interesting short piece at Federal Computing Week, reporter Bob Brewin looks at Amazon.mil? and how the Department of Defense might utilize web service APIs like those from Amazon, Google and others.

In a recent test, the Defense Information Systems Agency [DISA] compared the cost of developing a simple application called the Tech Early Bird on $30,000 worth of in-house servers and software with the costs of developing the same application using the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud from Amazon.com’s Web Services. Amazon charged 10 cents a minute for the service, and DISA paid a total of $5 to develop an application that matched the performance of the in-house application.

The test is an example of how DISA has been borrowing ideas from Amazon and other Web-based companies and sites, including Yahoo, Google and Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. ‘There may well be a commercial analog for everything we want to do,’ said Dave Mihelcic, DISA’s chief technology officer.
<p>Easier said than done of course given the DOD&rsquo;s need for security and renowned bureaucratic, waterfall model for acquiring and developing software. And it isn&rsquo;t that those agencies are not aware of the issues. In a speech last month at the U.S. DISA Industry Day, the agency&rsquo;s Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Croom advocated a web service approach noting that &lsquo;Information is America&rsquo;s greatest weapons system, but processes we have created are holding us back.&rsquo; (See also the recent New York Times Magazine story by Clive Thompson <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/magazine/03intelligence.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin">&lsquo;Open-Source Spying&rsquo;</a>.)</p>

Of the 1325 mashups listed here, none end in .mil. Yet.

(Via Programmable Web.)

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Amazon.mil?