A SELF-CONTAINED SOLUTION

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud service arm of Amazon, has just announced its delivery of AWS Modular Data Center (AWS MDC), to provide the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) with ability to deploy compute and storage capabilities in remote environments.

The new offering, AWS MDC is designed to deliver a cost-effective, self-contained modular data center solution that supports customers’ data center scale workloads, while giving access to AWS services and APIs to run low latency applications from virtually any location.

As announced, each modular data center unit is constructed using ruggedized containers that are designed and built for intermodal freight transport, which can be used across different modes of transportation from ship to rail to truck. The AWS MDC units are also air-transportable using military cargo aircraft.

“As the digital battlefield continues to evolve, our defense customers increasingly need access to cloud capabilities at the tactical edge, including DDIL environments all over the world. With AWS Modular Data Center, we are converting data centers from fixed infrastructure that is difficult to build and manage in remote environments, to a comprehensive service that is simple to use, secure, cost-effective, and can respond to large-scale compute and storage needs wherever the mission demands,” said Liz Martin, director of the Defense business at AWS.

AWS MDC is also expected to help defense customers securely store, analyze, and interpret petabytes worth of data in real-time to gain military advantage in the most isolated environments, instead of relying on limited data center infrastructure or building from the ground up.

According to AWS, MDC is available to U.S. Government customers who are eligible for the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract and is said to be currently supported in the AWS GovCloud (US-West) Region and AWS GovCloud (US-East) Region.

AWS also recently announced the launch of its second AWS infrastructure Region in Australia – the AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region. As announced, the new Melbourne Region is designed to give customers access to AWS advance technologies to help drive innovation including compute, storage, networking, business applications, developer tools, data analytics, security, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.