Ball Aerospace nabs sole-source NGA cloud deal

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency intends to award a one-year sole-source contract to Ball Aerospace Technologies Corp. for cloud computing, the agency announced on Feb. 9.

The contract will cover tagging, storing and protecting data in a cloud that is part of the Intelligence Community IT Enterprise, the IC's push for a common IT architecture.

Boulder, Colo.-based Ball Aerospace will be called on to translate NGA data to multiple formats accepted by the cloud architecture for discovery and advanced analytics.

The contract is a continuation of a previous task order. "Ball has the highly specialized knowledge, skill, experience and personnel required to perform this…effort within the very short timeline required," according to NGA's justification of the award. Ball Aerospace is the only NGA contractor that has successfully processed NGA geospatial data into the IC cloud architecture "to enable data discovery and advanced analytical use," the agency added.

A follow-on competitive source selection is planned for "future sustainment" of data-tagging capabilities for NGA data, with a request for proposals likely in March, the announcement said.

2016 could be a big year for ICITE, with the National Security Agency looking to help other intelligence agencies adopt the cloud-based architecture.

Ball Aerospace is involved in another key NGA initiative as well, producing a cross-functional database for the agency's Map of the World -- a project that taps into commercial and classified satellite data.