MOD agrees cloud deal to support AI ambitions

The UK Ministry of Defence has signed a new enterprise cloud agreement designed to strengthen its digital backbone and accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence across defence operations.

The deal with Red Hat provides centralised, scalable access to hybrid cloud platforms for teams across Defence Digital Foundry and approved third-party suppliers. It forms part of the department’s wider effort to standardise its complex IT estate, improve interoperability and create the foundations required to deploy AI at scale across mission-critical environments.

Defence Digital Foundry acts as a shared service spanning the Royal Navy, British Army, Royal Air Force, Space Command and Cyber & Specialist Operations Command. By standardising on a common cloud-native platform, the MOD aims to support modern application development practices while enabling teams to deploy workloads on-premise, across multiple clouds or at the edge.

A central ambition of the agreement is to unlock AI delivery at scale. It aims to unify previously fragmented AI initiatives onto a common platform, enabling developers and data scientists to collaborate more easily and deploy models across different hardware environments.

Additional anticipated benefits include strengthened cyber resilience and expanded automation to reduce manual processes and improve compliance.

Mivy James, Chief Technology Officer at the UK Ministry of Defence, said: “Red Hat is helping Defence Digital Foundry build our unified, modern digital backbone to keep the UK Ministry of Defence agile and innovative. With this enterprise agreement, people up and down the country working for the UK Ministry of Defence can more easily and reliably access tools and collaborate using common Red Hat-based platforms, and we’re able to increase operational efficiency, save resources and optimise costs.

Joanna Hodgson, Regional Manager, UK and Ireland at Red Hat, added: “With Red Hat providing a centralised cloud-native platform and approach, all teams across the UK Ministry of Defence can develop and deliver new mission-driven digital services faster with a more consistent security footprint.”