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Balancing Risk and the Right Solution

Four Challenges, One Dilemma

Generalizing the challenges confronting federal organizations is a very risky proposition. But certainly, they all face four types of issues:

  • Providing access to applications, data, and services that enable agencies to operate more effectively
  • Assuring the availability, trustworthiness, and privacy of resources
  • Documenting the security of systems and the effectiveness of programs
  • Meeting standards for governance and financial oversight

Within these categories, each agency has vastly different networking requirements. Those specific needs (combined with the four challenges above) point to the real dilemma facing government organizations—How do they balance their need for custom network solutions with an acceptable level of risk? 

The Right Balance Requires The Right Partner

AAC helps agencies find a balance between risk and the right solution with a progression of qualifications:

  • Specialized in networks and all related technologies
  • Experts in IP infrastructure and telephony
  • Past performance in both DoD and Civilian agencies
  • Strong bench of senior engineers
  • Certified for quality and engineering best practices
  • Equipped with agency-specific policies and procedures
  • Adept in compliance with FISMA and OMB requirements

Individually, these qualifications constitute the portfolio of proficiencies we bring to bear on our customers’ challenges. Together, they enable us to help agencies:

  • Offload the burden of day-to-day support for processes, users, infrastructure, maintenance, and management
  • Augment their personnel with immediate access to certified engineering expertise
  • Complement their capabilities with technical leadership, trusted advice, and knowledge transferred from commercial applications
  • Protect their information by enforcing their policies for access, security, continuity of operations, and disaster recovery
  • Address specific requirements such as personnel retention, document management, online services, teleworking solutions, etc.
  • Ensure compliance while doing any or all of the above

Practical Solutions for Federal Agencies
AAC provides the engineering expertise and manpower agencies need to meet their unique networking challenges. We help agencies address their requirements with tested approaches, proven best practices, and tailored solutions based on COTS technology. Project by project, over time, we lay the foundation for operational effectiveness and security with our expertise in engineering IP networks. We build on that foundation with our core competencies in:

  • Unified communications
  • Enterprise infrastructure

These competencies draw as needed on our capabilities for designing, building, operating, and managing networks:

  • Data
  • Voice
  • Video
  • Applications
  • Information Assurance/Security
  • Program Management
  • Process Management
  • Customer Support/Help Desk
  • Operations and Maintenance

We ensure the quality and timely delivery of all these capabilities with ITIL, ISO 20000, and ISO 9001:2008-certified best practices and technical certifications from Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Citrix, VMware, the Computing Technology Industry Association (CTIA), and other organizations.

 

Real-World Knowledge Proven In Past Performance

AAC has over 25 years of experience serving government agencies. This past performance means we understand not just technology, but how government agencies actually operate. Here are just a few cases that illustrate how we combine our technical capabilities with real-world knowledge to help our customers build toward highly effective performance:

 

National Library of Medicine (NLM): Operations and Maintenance Support

Under three separate competitive awards since 1986, AAC designed, built, and continues to support NLM’s data communications network. Originally, AAC researched technologies, evaluated products, recommended an architecture, assisted in acquisition, then designed and implemented the infrastructure. Today, AAC provides ongoing support for the NLM LAN/ WAN, remote access, systems administration, messaging systems, desktops, network monitoring, and management. AAC also helped NLM plan and set up a consolidated co-location facility.

 

Federal Communications Commission (FCC): Essential Online Services

Since 1994, AAC has managed the infrastructure the FCC uses to auction broadcast spectrum. AAC is responsible for evaluating, planning, designing, deploying, administering, and trouble-shooting all of the networks in the system. AAC also provides IT security, wireless communications, Microsoft support, disaster recovery, and business continuity for primary sites and backup sites in Washington, DC and Gettysburg, PA. During its tenure, AAC has helped the FCC realize cost savings through consolidation, accelerate testing with a virtualized test environment, and maintain high availability with no internal or external intrusions.

 

Navy Personnel Command (NPC): StayNAVY

On its StayNAVY website, the NPC encourages sailors to stay in the service with tools and information they can use to plan successful naval careers. It uses a state-of-the-art Navy Retention Monitoring System (NRMS) to anticipate reenlistment behavior and manage the enlisted force. The NPC has engaged AAC for five years to manage and maintain all of the network infrastructure supporting both the StayNAVY site and the NRMS. AAC is the prime contractor on this engagement for overall system availability, day-to-day administration and maintenance, testing, system modifications, configuration management, backup, disaster recovery, user support, documentation, compliance, and other responsibilities. AAC will also work to integrate the StayNAVY site and NRMS tools with other related programs of the NPC CIO.

 

US Army Reserves Command: Response Readiness

In 2007 teams of AAC network engineers started deploying all over the continental U.S. to completely upgrade the LAN and WAN infrastructure at the top 70 Army Reserves locations. This multi-year project is being lauded by the Reserves as the most painless installation they’ve ever experienced. AAC technicians pre-stage the equipment, apply standardized configurations, affix the DoD required MIL-STD-130 Item Unique Identification (IUID) labels, conduct IUID readability verification tests, and then ship the equipment to the site. Our network engineers meet and inventory the equipment at the site, install the equipment, perform cut-over to the new system, and conduct comprehensive tests and acceptance before obtaining DD-250 sign-off and moving on to the next site. Our back-office personnel then registers the equipment with DoD’s wide area workflow system (WAWF) for invoicing, receipt, and acceptance. Each site realizes immediate benefit in the speeds at which the activities can now communicate. This enhanced ability to communicate greatly increases each unit’s mission preparedness posture. On top of this new network infrastructure, AAC has recently piloted three sites in Texas with a state-of-the art Voice over IP solution based upon Cisco unified communications technology.