Beyond the Horizon: Soliel’s Cloud Renaissance for DoD

Recognizing the critical role of IT modernization in national defense, the Department of Defense (DoD) embarked on a mission to enhance its cloud capabilities, with Soliel at the helm of this transformative journey.

Challenge: Tasked with managing a colossal $800 billion budget, the DoD’s shift to modernized cloud services was crucial for increasing resilience, improving cyber defenses, and efficiently supporting the nation’s warfighters.

Solution: Soliel masterfully deployed an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Minimum Viable Product (MVP) on Amazon Web Services (AWS), harnessing the power of AWS CloudFormation, AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK), and AWS Lambda. This move streamlined the deployment process, integrating Compliance as Code (CaC) through Prisma to guarantee ongoing compliance monitoring and enforcement across cloud resources. With the adoption of Policy as Code (PaC) using Terraform and Open Policy Agent (OPA), Soliel automated policy enforcement to meet stringent governance standards. This strategic implementation facilitated the automated setup and management of key AWS services, bolstering the DoD’s applications and services with enhanced scalability, reliability, and security.

Key Infrastructure Enhancements included:

• Compute Infrastructure: Utilizing Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2), AWS Lambda, Elastic Container Service (ECS), Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), and AWS Batch for robust computing capabilities.
• Storage Infrastructure: Leveraging Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Elastic Block Store (EBS), and Elastic File System (EFS) for secure and scalable storage solutions.
• Networking Infrastructure: Implementing Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Route 53, and Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) to ensure efficient and reliable networking.
• Database Infrastructure: Employing Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), DynamoDB, and Aurora for high-performance database services.
• Security Infrastructure: Fortifying security with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), Web Application Firewall (WAF), Secrets Manager, and Key Management Service (KMS), complemented by Prisma for CaC and Terraform with OPA for advanced PaC.
• Innovative Features: Integrating new generative AI capabilities with Amazon Q and Amazon Q Connect, paving the way for enhanced data handling and analysis, reducing the need for traditional Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) processes.

Outcomes: The IaC MVP initiative has significantly accelerated the deployment of DoD services to AWS GovCloud, ensuring consistent and secure cloud environments. This shift has not only minimized manual efforts but also fortified the security and compliance posture of the DoD’s cloud initiatives.