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NGA, BAE Systems team up to migrate GEOINT data to cloud

By Carlo Munoz |

A US Army all-source intelligence technician, assigned to 2nd Battalion, 34th Armored Regiment, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, assists the battalion intelligence officer during the ‘Allied Spirit X' exercise in Germany. (US Army)

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is teaming up with BAE Systems to migrate the agency's vast reams of geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) data into a cloud-based architecture, with a near-term goal of fielding a version of the cloud-hosted database architecture by July, Janes has learnt.

NGA awarded BAE Systems a five-year indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (ID/IQ) contract for development of the National System for Geospatial-Intelligence (NSG) Enterprise Repository and Virtual Environment (NERVE) programme.

The USD47 million deal will modernise the centralised operational and systems framework for the agency's NSG Consolidated Library (NCL) and transition it to a fully cloud-based environment. The NERVE programme will also provide “new GEOINT capabilities and integrate sensors into the cloud-based content management system”, according to a January company statement.

The current NCL architecture is hosted exclusively on physical servers at NGA facilities. The pending transition to a cloud-based environment “will help us with allocation of compute [capabilities] to meet new data-driven requirement[s], as well as [data] availability management and access throughout the enterprise”, said Meg Redlin, product line director for Mission Systems at BAE Systems.

“This new contract is going to give us the means to collaborate with [NGA] to really deliver on the [data] types and capacity of data that they are foreseeing in the near future,” she said during a 10 January interview with Janes.

“The [NCL] enterprise is continually evolving to meet new mission [requirements], and that data will also evolve both in [data] types and numbers,” Redlin explained.

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