When it comes to mission operations, the military is facing several hurdles, starting with the need to consolidate its view of data in a world where data can be messy.
“There is all of this data out there coming off of sensing technologies, off of different systems, all formatted differently,” said Stephen Carlon, managing director and deputy mission operations domain lead for Accenture Federal Services’ Defense & Intelligence Portfolio. “We need our mission partners to be able to exchange and use the data, but you’re likely never going to get the world to agree on a standard for how to share this data. So: How do you operate in a mixed-standard environment?”
Carlon recognized the depth of that need while in his prior role as C4ISR client account lead at Accenture Federal Services. On Sept. 1, he took on his new role helping the military tackle this and other challenges.
Even as the military moves to harness the power of mission-critical data, “it is going to be operating in denied, or at a very least degraded, communications environments,” he said. “You might come up with the best way to share data in the world, but when situations escalate, how are you going to be able to pass that data around?”
Those are just the kind of problems that Carlon and his team at Accenture Federal are helping to solve.
First, “we’re heavily partnered and engaged with the cloud providers, providing solutions that use their edge-forward technologies to tackle these issues,” he said. “We’ve done this with multiple services: Designing solutions that push cloud forward.”
The company also provides a range of technologies and capabilities that help consolidate information across the DOD data landscape, stitching together, “the non-standard or standard-less environments, so that you can have a more seamless experience,” Carlon said.
Carlon’s team also delivers software capabilities that address tactical command and control problems. As an operator looks to utilize sensor data, computer vision, and other AI capabilities, “we provide solutions for processing, exploitation, and dissemination,” he said. “As data is coming back, you’re getting the most out of the data from a strategic decision-making perspective.”
These and other capabilities can be paired with multi-level security systems. As DOD partners with other nations, and across different levels of classification, MLS systems make it possible to pass the right information to the right people, based on their level of access, Carlon said.
While others are trying to solve these same problems, Carlon said the ready usability of Accenture Federal Services solutions is a competitive differentiator.
“We are offering tailored, out-of-the-box solutions,” he said. Another vendor might have a great platform, for example, but that platform might not be tailored to meet the specific mission needs right from the get-go. “Our approach is: Let us build something for you to meet that problem. We have ready-built solutions that will get you 80 percent of the way there, and then we can make that specific to your mission.”
Within the broad DOD market, Accenture Federal Services has its eyes especially on certain Program Executive Offices (PEOs) within Army, Navy, and Special Operations.
For the Army, “we’re heavily focused on PEO IEW&S [Intelligence, Electronic Warfare & Sensors], where a lot of the sensing technology and sensing programs originate,” he said. “We’re also focused on PEO C3T [Command, Control, and Communications-Tactical], where unified network operations (UNO) lives.”
The Accenture Federal team also is eying the Navy’s needs in the Pacific Command, as well as Special Ops needs around data processing, exploitation and dissemination.
There is no shortage of opportunity. In fact, “the biggest challenge is that this market is really big,” Carlon said. “That means you need to make focused decisions on where you want to concentrate. Even saying that we concentrate across the Army, Navy, and SOCOM: That’s big. That’s why we’re focused on specific parts of those markets, where we provide the biggest mission impact.”
On the international scene, Carlon’s team has its eye on growth among America’s partner nations, who will play a pivotal role in future military data-sharing scenarios.
Accenture Federal aims to provide “similar, if not the same systems, not only to the U.S. but partner nations,” he said. In doing that, it simplifies “all of that interoperability and ability to communicate.”
With nearly 20 years’ experience in the GovCon space, Carlon said he takes personal pride in the work he’s doing to support the needs of the military.
“In the mission operations realm, you know that what you are doing on a daily basis is helping to keep our country safe — helping to keep the world safe,” he said.