General Dynamics’ information technology business said milCloud 2.0 is on schedule to host classified workloads starting this summer as the Impact Level 6 authorization process to certify the Department of Defense’s on-premise cloud platform to handle such workloads is now in progress.

Cloud service providers are investing in the development of technology platforms that could help the Department of Defense meet the needs of warfighters operating in tactical, distributed environments. “We have to create devices that can operate in those austere environments,” said Rick Wagner, president of Microsoft Federal for government customers and a 2021 Wash100 Award recipient.

Anduril Industries plans a new round of financing that would value the defense technology startup at approximately $4 billion to $5 billion. The Irvine, California-based startup is likely to use the proceeds to further expand development work on drones and other military equipment.

Wesley Kremer, president of the missiles and defense business at Raytheon Technologies, talked about how defense contractors speed up the development of weapons systems and related platforms for armed services using digital thread or digital design.

A U.S. subsidiary of Software AG has partnered with MxD to help the latter provide a tool that will allow the Department of Defense to identify risks to its supply chain and minimize potential disruption to manufacturing capabilities during a crisis.

Greg Hayes, CEO of Raytheon Technologies, said the company has positioned its product portfolio to target the 2018 National Defense Strategy’s priorities as it anticipates a flat defense budget in the coming fiscal year, the Washington Business Journal reported Thursday.

Intel has partnered with Leidos and cloud security technology maker Fortanix to deploy integrated technologies to support real-time data sharing across a distributed network intended to streamline clinical trial procedures. Leidos used Intel’s software guard extension and Fortanix’s Confidential Computing Manager to establish a network of secure computing environments that work to handle key real-world data while complying with industry and patient privacy guidelines.

Adita Karkera, formerly deputy chief data officer for the state of Arkansas, has joined Deloitte Consulting’s government analytics and cognitive practice as a data and artificial intelligence architect. She will advise CDOs in federal and state agencies on their AI and data strategies and serve as a fellow in Deloitte’s AI Institute for Government.

Adam Selipsky, former president and CEO of Tableau Software, is set to succeed Andy Jassy as CEO of Amazon Web Services in May and will return to AWS as analysts predict further growth for the company driven by a potential increase in federal spending on cloud contracts, the Washington Business Journal reported Tuesday. “I believe that AWS will increase its footprint by 25% to 30% over the next 12 to 18 months, given the federal opportunities,” said Dan Ives, a technology, internet and media analyst at investment firm Wedbush Securities. “We believe that this is a golden age within federal cloud."

The Food and Drug Administration uses Abbyy's artificial intelligence-based information technology platform to simplify the process of analyzing data from pre-marketing clinical trial safety reports on experimental drugs, GCN reported Wednesday. “We found that we can just drop 100,000 files in, have them process over the course of a week and almost all of them were recognized,” Justin Scott, senior business informatics officer at the FDA, was quoted as saying.

Brett McMillen, director of U.S. federal at Amazon Web Services, told FedScoop in an interview published Monday how federal agencies like the Small Business Administration and the U.S. Census Bureau responded to the COVID-19 pandemic using cloud.

Sonny Hashmi, commissioner of the U.S. General Services Administration’s (GSA) Federal Acquisition Service (FAS), has received his first Wash100 Award, the most respect award in all of government contracting (GovCon), after demonstrating his vision in the federal sector and leading the drive of technology transformation, acquisitions and massive contract awards that support the administration’s key missions and the best interests of the U.S.