Cloud

Navy Moves to Dedicated Microsoft 365 Cloud Environments

The service branch is shifting to a single-tenant cloud for both the Department of the Navy and the Marine Corps to boost its move to ICAM.

Phil Goldstein

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Phil Goldstein is a former web editor of the CDW family of tech magazines and a veteran technology journalist. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and their animals: a dog named Brenna, and two cats, Grady and Princess.

The Navy is laying the foundation for its identity, credential and access management (ICAM) strategy by adopting single-tenant cloud environments for Microsoft 365.

The Navy is moving to single-tenant cloud services for both the Navy and the department’s secretariat and a single-tenant cloud for the Marine Corps, according to a memo from Navy CIO Aaron Weis. The memo was released on Sept. 15, according to FCW.

Moving to single tenancy will be the fastest way to ensure that Navy users are “accounted for and migrated to the cloud-based office suite of services offered by Microsoft 365,” including Office 365 and Outlook email. The shift will allow the Navy to cut costs and reduce complexity, enable effective command and control, and increase the “efficiency of federation management with external DON tenants,” the memo states.

“Single tenancy does not preclude deployment of the collaboration and productivity services across multiple networks,” the memo adds.

The move is designed to get the Navy to adopt a model of “one email for life” for its users.

Navy Envisions an ICAM Model That Boosts Flexibility

According to the memo, the move to single-tenant services will allow the Navy to pursue a common ICAM approach across the Defense Department.

“Single directory management for the Navy and Marine Corps will allow a reduction to individual aliases,” the memo notes.

Additionally, directory management tools will be able to “serve as a source of identity management” for applications that are being refactored for the cloud and for which the Navy wants to have “flexible access management and single sign-on.”

The Navy aims to leverage the move “to clean up identity, and to learn and evolve as our understanding grows.” The memo calls for individual testing, procurement or implementation of the Microsoft 365 tenants to be reviewed by the Navy CIO’s office.

Like other service branches and components of the DOD, the Navy has been using the Commercial Virtual Remote environment, a service that offers access to Microsoft Teams for collaboration.

However, as FedScoop reports, “the CVR environment will expire in December and be replaced with a more ‘enduring’ environment for the department.”

MC2 Matthew Dickinson/U.S. Navy