Logging on: Army's web portal expanding under new management.

As the Army continues to move toward becoming an information-age force, its demands for networking tools and training have increased at a commensurate rate.

To keep up with those needs, the Army in July awarded a $152 million contract to Lockheed Martin Corp., based in Bethesda, Md., to manage the service's four-year-old enterprise web portal, Army Knowledge Online.

"The impetus was to make this capability available to industries to let them tell us, what are some new solutions out there, how can we make this better ... and hopefully doing it at less cost," said Col. Taylor Chasteen, product manager for AKO in the Army's program executive office for enterprise information systems.

AKO serves 1.8 million users, with 300,000 people logging on daily, said officials. It's one of the largest corporate intranet portals known in the world, according to Autonomy Corp., which produces infrastructure software for the enterprise.

"AKO is a wonderful vehicle, and the Army has yet to realize its full potential," said Chasteen. "Part of our job here is to stay in touch with industry, to stay aware of tools and technologies that could be incorporated into the portal at some point in time."

The suite of offerings that AKO provides its users include the Army's sole unified directory, e-mail, instant messaging, chat rooms, file storage and document collaboration, said officials.

"We like to compare ourselves to Yahoo," said Lt. Col. Kenneth Blakely, chief of operations for AKO.

Like Yahoo and other commercial web portals, AKO offers a wide range of services that is tailored to individuals, said Blakely.

In addition to accessing online news and Army announcements, users also can view personal information and records pertaining to education, training, finance and health. Active-duty soldiers and reservists are required to complete a number of online courses, such as a new mandatory accident avoidance course, which they can fulfill via AKO.

Groups within the service, too, can find or create niches on AKO.

"Any organization above the battalion level can have its own web presence," said Blakely. "They can have their own coloring, branding and everything else."

The Army Test and Evaluation Center, for example, has begun migrating its presence into AKO, he said.

Users can access AKO anywhere, at any time, as long as they have a browser, password and connection, said officials.

Lt. Col. Mike Bridges, chief of architecture, said he used AKO every single day during a trip to Iraq in the fall.

"It was nice to be able to pick up and travel around the globe, and have access to everything that I would have back on my office desktop," he said. "That is the true benefit of net-centric."

While in Iraq, Bridges witnessed soldiers in the 42nd Infantry Division using AKO.

"They use nothing but AKO for services of document sharing, posting and e-mail. It is a very useful tool for soldiers who are doing the work over there," said Bridges.

After Hurricane Katrina occurred, the Army continuously put up content relating to relief efforts and opened up discussion forums on the topic.

"It was very important for folks deployed to Iraq to have access to hurricane information via AKO," said Chasteen.

Officials said they want to develop collaboration tools, such as white-boarding, application sharing and web conferencing, that would enable users to meet and share information virtually. In addition, they want to develop the concept of eliminating paper from the force through the forms content management program.

The project has not been without controversy. Shortly after the Army awarded Lockheed with the AKO contract in July, CherryRoad Technologies and EDS Corp. filed protests with the Government Accountability Office, over interpretation and best value, respectively.

GAO denied the protests in October. A Lockheed spokesman said the company's plans will move ahead once it receives instructions to begin work. Until then, the company cannot disclose any details.

In the initial press release announcing the contract award, Lockheed said, "The team will design and implement a new AKO architecture, one that will significantly reduce operating costs, bolster performance and reliability, and set the stage for an evolution to netcentric operations." Lockheed will lead a team of subcontractors, including Science Applications International Corp. and Computer Sciences Corp., in managing and administering AKO.

AKO was deployed in 2001 using an enterprise portal produced by Appian, said officials.

"When it started out, it was a dynamic web page with a lot of capability," said Blakely. "Back in 2001, you couldn't just buy a piece of portal technology off the street the way you can today," he added.

AKO, based at Fort Belvoir, Va., now runs on version 3.0 of the Appian portal. The network is hosted on 300 Unix servers and has 73 terabytes of raw storage space. Officials said there are plans to expand the servers. But they declined to comment on the intranet's operating costs, citing Defense Department policy.

People are nervous about enterprise solutions, said Chasteen. They worry that AKO might not be secure enough, available enough, scalable enough, reliable enough, he said.

"I think we have addressed all of those issues. We are confident in the architecture to provide all of those," he said.

However, conveying that message to potential users remains a challenge. "There is a population out there that we haven't reached yet," consisting of mostly civilians and retirees, said Chasteen.