INDUSTRY INTERVIEW: STG
MIT 2009 Volume: 13 Issue: 8 (September)
Simon Lee
President and Chief Executive Officer
STG
Q: What does STG do to support the Army’s Global Network Enterprise Construct [GNEC]?
A: The GNEC is a global enterprise capability that is enabled by Network Service Centers [NSC]. Currently, the Army is projecting five NSCs in its IT enterprise. Each NSC has three major capabilities: Fixed Regional Hub Node [FRHN], Area Processing Centers [APC] and Theater Network Operations and Security Centers [TNOSC]. By supporting the TNOSCs, we are also providing support to NETOPS, FRHNs and APCs. Our responsibilities include indirect support to other Army organizations requesting copies of our processes; ITIL best practices; lessons learned; and Army tactics, techniques, and procedures [ATTP], as well as those requesting subject matter expertise [SME] and reachback support to enable other Army organizations to meet their individual missions.
STG is proud to be a part of the Army’s team. As a mid-sized business and partner in the collaborative efforts across 9th Signal Command (Army) [9th SC(A)], STG believes in sharing our expertise and knowledge across the enterprise to serve the greater good of the Army. We use our knowledge of Army initiatives to ensure other Army enterprises are using their scarce investment dollars to the greatest possible outcome.
In the end, we all share one mission: to support the warfighter and keep our soldiers and our country safe.
Q: How are the TNOSCs, with increasing mission and decreasing budgets, transforming to a modular-based, expeditionary force capable of full-spectrum operations?
A: The key here is collaboration across the Army enterprise. In order to maximize available resources, the individual TNOSCs are sharing their processes, SME and lessons learned with one another. Sharing these best practices and tools across the entire Army enterprise allows 9th SC(A) to fully leverage the unique expertise and knowledge of common NETOPS tools available in the Army IT enterprise. This includes sharing and integrating their ATTPs, sharing lessons learned across the TNOSCs and working to integrate proven ITIL-based processes and procedures across all Army IT support service providers. Across the Army enterprise, this collaboration includes integrating all those individual processes developed across the TNOSCs and NECs, so that each organization understands its own responsibilities and how its services and procedures fit into the larger Army enterprise.
Q: How does innovation play a part in the Army’s transformation and mission?
A: It is important to take advantage of emerging commercial technologies and leverage their improved capabilities as they apply to an Army environment. In addition, the Army does an outstanding job of establishing forums where the Army’s leadership explains their IT mission needs to the government contractor community, which allows industry to focus its independent research and development investments on the Army’s actual current and future IT requirements.
The Army has established IT enterprise leadership among the military community by tailoring commercial IT best practices in their mission-critical environment. They are generating an environment that concentrates on continuity of delivered services while greatly reducing the risk of unexpected service outages. Currently, in the Army’s rapidly changing tactical IT environment, it is important to be able to react quickly to unexpected issues. The Army is focused on establishing processes that support a more proactive, rather than reactive, approach to IT enterprise management. The war fight starts at the tactical edge with the world’s finest fighting force. Industry’s role is to develop innovative technology that will support the warfighter from the tactical edge back to the Army’s enterprise enablers.
Q: What role does a contractor like STG play in supporting the Army’s mission?
A: First, let me say again how honored STG is to play a role on the Army’s team. Every day our employees wake up proud and humbled by the sacrifices our warfighters make to keep our country safe.
The Army is starting to fully embrace performance-based contracting and the idea of service delivery, and is focused on increasing situational awareness to make the warfighter more lethal and powerful. The Army is concerned about the overall impact of IT service delivery to the warfighter, the impact on the mission, and the impact to the Army. They shouldn’t have to focus on the small, individual components that help lead to the delivery of IT services. As a government contractor, it is STG’s job to worry about the bits and bytes, and let the Army focus on accomplishing their mission.
In short, we help enable the Army to focus on the intended outcome, and not solely on how IT can support the accomplishment of the mission. They tell us what services are needed to support the mission, and we determine how best to deliver those services to the warfighter. That is what we do, and we do it well. The Army’s mission is important to national security and defense, and we are happy to play a small role in helping achieve that mission. ♦
