HP announced that it will be supplying the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) with scalable technology to enable its Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) to deploy a cloud computing infrastructure.

The shared, flexible infrastructure will allow DISA to remotely provision its test and development systems through a single, secure interface. DISA provides processing capability, systems management, communications and storage to support DoD services, agencies and combatant commands.

HP's offerings will enable DISA to build an adaptable cloud computing infrastructure it calls RACE (or, Rapid Access Computing Environment), which is designed to reduce costs, consolidate applications, shorten delivery times and simplify the user experience. According to a DISA official, RACE represents an unprecedented capability for the DoD, offering the speed and agility comparable to the commercial marketplace.

Users of the RACE cloud infrastructure will avoid capital costs for hardware or software licenses and instead pay for computing resources with operations and maintenance budgets on an as-needed basis. When a compute-intensive cycle is complete, resources will be returned to the cloud, ensuring that the user pays only for the resources required.

In addition, the responsive, HP-powered solution will automate management tasks, dynamically allocating server resources where they are needed, thereby optimizing efficiency, saving energy and minimizing the need for personnel oversight.

DISA employees can provision operating environments from the cloud with a service catalog accessed via an easy-to-use web portal. The cloud compute resources will be based on DISA's standard architecture, which allows for a smoother transition from design and testing to production.

"To provide its customers with rapid access to new servers while delivering customizable and cost-effective scalable solutions, DISA needed an integrated, easily manageable cloud computing infrastructure to support its test and development systems," said Christine Martino, vice president and general manager, Scalable Computing and Infrastructure Organization, HP. "HP's unique understanding of large-scale data center requirements enabled us to provide DISA with the ideal balance of solutions and services to create a unified, web-based management system that met their objectives."

HP will provide DISA a broad array of HP products, software and services to implement and support the cloud infrastructure. HP software featured in the solution includes HP Operations Orchestration, HP Server Automation, HP Service Manager, HP Operations Manager, HP Systems Insight Manager and HP ProLiant Essentials. HP will also provide ProLiant server blades, implementation services and on-site operations management.