Government agencies that have specific computing needs benefit when they have the custom digital architecture to support their requirements. To accommodate these types of requirements, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is planning to offer professionals within the U.S. intelligence community the chance to buy and download sector-specific apps to work in conjunction with its own private cloud.
According to the Federal Times, the CIA is pursuing this marketplace to create a resource for relevant apps for the intelligence community (IC). Although this program is separate from any standard commercial app marketplace, it will borrow some of the same principles to make purchasing and experimenting with available apps easy. The Agency's CIO, Doug Wolfe, told the Times that the apps they target for inclusion will have a "mission purpose."
NextGov recently reported that the CIA was hosting its own "data lake" in a protected cloud. It has also harnessed virtual private networks to give members of the intelligence community a chance to access the same environment.
Wolfe told the Times about the thought process that went into the decision to create this new marketplace.
"We started looking at how we were going to apply this thing and looking at what happens commercially in a cloud structure and some folks had the idea that we need an environment that is much like the marketplace we see commercially," he said. "We are going to be delivering a private marketplace that will support the IC."
Working inside of a private cloud gives government entities the option of simultaneously developing their own apps and app sources to suit their needs. By the same token, they should consider a mainframe modernization solution to work within one cloud and make access to important data and applications safe and easy.