Unified Endpoint at the Navy Innovation Center
Implementing DaaS also happens to be the first step in solving other Navy challenges, such as sailors having to carry hard copies of their medical records on and off ships for lack of the digital records other countries’ navies have, says Travis Methvin, federal strategist at CDW Government.
This is just one reason CDW Government is transforming its existing Navy Innovation Center by expanding the data center and capabilities available for proofs of concept.
“What we're doing is really taking a hard look at where there are technology spaces that the Department of Defense is going and how we start targeting that technology and those partnerships,” Methvin says. “How do we start building out products, solutions and support?”
CDW Government aims to reshape the conversation around value-added resellers and solution engineering in the process.
Capabilities from 5G wireless to Starlink are built into the innovation center for testing, so they can be quickly deployed if the Naval Rapid Capabilities Office issues an Other Transaction Authority for procurement. No more six- to nine-month development cycle, Methvin says.
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Where Platform Engineering Fits Into the Navy’s Priorities
Platform engineering has a role to play not only in implementing UEM but also in rapidly introducing new capabilities to ships — another Navy pain point likely to come up at WEST 2026.
“Platform engineering is kind of like the final boss of DevOps,” Stimbert says. “You have DevOps and DevSecOps; platform engineering is taking that to its logical conclusion, where you've got a fully realized internal development platform, and Infrastructure as Code is how you interact with your system end to end.”
That’s true whether it’s a developer, end user or advanced user deploying new resources with IaC, because it doesn’t require much programming experience. In the Navy’s case, deployments can be done remotely from shore by adding code to the repository or by a sailor using an automated, graphical user interface life process that makes repository changes in the background.
IaC goes into hybrid or multicloud, across data centers, is deployable on any type of hardware or virtual machines, and should by deployable on any system — especially if it’s Kubernetes-based.
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