Accelerating Mission-Critical Development for National Defense

National defense organizations have some of the most demanding software requirements in the world. Stringent security standards and complex environments make it challenging for developers to work efficiently. Because systems are deployed across large, proprietary government data centers, development teams find it challenging to create production-like environments for coding and testing. This, in turn, reduces the number of testing cycles that can be performed in a given amount of time.

As one of the world’s leading providers of technology for mission-critical defense systems, Raytheon Technologies is using Amazon Web Services (AWS) to deliver solutions faster, with higher quality and lower cost.

Because of the highly sensitive nature of their programs, the company requires a cloud solution that complies with a wide range of government requirements. The company is using AWS GovCloud (US) to enable developers and testers to work at scale and speeds previously not achievable.

AWS GovCloud (US) services are U.S. Department of Defense Impact Level 2, 4 , and Level 5–compliant. “Granular AWS authorization, authentication, and logging services empower us to manage complex security requirements to meet individual customer needs,” says Steve Porter, Engineering Fellow, Raytheon Technologies.

Using AWS GovCloud (US), Raytheon Technologies can provision network, storage, and compute resources on demand with the elasticity to grow and shrink those resources as needed for its national defense customers. Raytheon Technologies also cut its testing time from months to minutes using its cloud-based DevOps approach.

 “In the past, test environments took four months to build, and they were updated infrequently,” says Porter. “Now, using AWS, we deploy them in 15 minutes. Because environments persist for only a few hours, they don’t drift from the latest system baseline, and automated test pipelines control the lifecycle of the environment from provisioning through tear-down.”

With an elastic, on-demand, cloud-based development environment, Raytheon Technologies can reduce its commitment to planning, building, and maintaining on-premises data centers, which are expensive and time-consuming endeavors. If additional compute, storage, or network resources are needed, they are instantly available.

We recently published a deeper dive into the Raytheon Technologies story here. Learn more about how they are equipped to deliver results for their defense customers as an Advanced Consulting Partner in the AWS Partner Network (APN) and a member of the AWS Public Sector Partner Program.