Mar 16, 2021
The Department of Defense's Commercial Virtual Remote environment, spun up to accommodate telework in the COVID-19 pandemic, quickly became the largest Microsoft Teams deployment in the world -- and brought department-wide collaboration tools to DOD after years of less-successful attempts.
DOD personnel have embraced the tools and the silo-spanning interactions they enable, but CVR was always intended as a temporary fix. So the Defense Information Systems Agency is working hard to ensure the collaboration doesn't fade when CVR sunsets in July.
Les Benito, the director of operations for DISA's Cloud Computing Program Office, said that Global Directory is the key. Speaking at FCW and Defense Systems' March 10 event on Defense Readiness, Benito explained that the initiative will provide "a cloud-wide identity" as the military services spin up their own Microsoft 365 environments under the Defense Enterprise Office Solutions (DEOS) contract.