Modern war-fighting is dependent on timely, accurate, understandable and trusted data available to commands at echelon at the speed of mission. According to the Navy’s deputy chief information officer, Randal Cole, the service is struggling with a two-prong data problem. First, how to deal with the sheer amount of data collected, and then understanding if they have the correct kind of data to help leaders make decisions. Join the Chief Data Officer of the Department of the Navy, Thomas Sasala, to discuss how he is effectively storing and managing the vast amount of data the Navy collects. He will explore the lessons learned from managing data previously for the Army, weaving goals into the Navy’s plan for newer technologies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Last year was a uniquely beneficial time to migrate and modernize data in the cloud. Cloud computing alone is unable to handle the immense amount of data generated by billions of connected devices, and most systems will not rely exclusively on advanced computing. In fact, most systems require a hybrid solution consisting of edge and cloud components. During this session, join leaders to discuss how interoperability between edge architectures and cloud environments is crucial. They will discuss how edge-based technologies can help with real-time data collection, computation, and storage to make better mission-critical decisions in a hybrid environment.

The growing diversity of platforms, vendors, and protocols in large data centers makes managing and monitoring the enterprise storage infrastructure increasingly difficult. At the same time, IT leaders are feeling the additional pressure of providing information technology as a service with their own private clouds, which must be competitive with public cloud offerings. During this session, you will hear from leaders about the tools they use to optimize their current infrastructure efficiently, enabling them to achieve intelligent observability so that they can spend more time innovating and not troubleshooting.

In military operations, having all the data in the world doesn't matter if you can't use it to maximize your resources and firepower when and where they are most needed. When it comes to the Department of Defense there is no shortage of technology, but there is a significant gap in the tools that support data-driven decisions for military teams in the field. During this session, join leaders from Accenture and the United States Airforce to discuss how organizations can leverage the cloud for efficiency and security purposes. They will explore how the DoD can build a collaborative information environment that allows warfighters to sense, disseminate, collect, and analyze data faster than before.