(L to R) Senator James Paterson (Shadow Minister for Home Affairs and Cyber Security), Andrew Hastie (Shadow Minister for Defence), Jason Van der Schyff (SoftIron)
SoftIron has launched what it calls the world’s first sovereign AUKUS cloud solution which can be deployed “in the extremes of the battlespace”, according to the storage vendor.
Named the AUKUS Sovereign Tactical Edge Cloud (ASTEC), the deployable cloud server hardware consists of eight server nodes with additional space for external components like cabling or network encryption devices.
It can also be stacked and scaled to create a larger network and offers classified data storage, compute and networking capacity in a 10-rack unit military-grade ruggedised case that can withstand shock, vibration, water, salt fog, dust and sand.
The core of ASTEC is the storage vendor’s HyperCloud integrated platform, which, according to SoftIron chief operating officer Jason Van der Schyff, takes a “highly-opinionated approach to deployment across the entire stack from hardware provisioning to tenancy management”.
“ASTEC’s architecture has the potential to deliver a combination of performance, flexibility and simplicity in deployment and operation that surpasses any known capability currently in use, ultimately removing the barriers to fast and consistent deployments of on-the-ground cloud services,” Van der Schyff said.
SoftIron conducted a live demonstration of ASTEC with a federated cloud environment between Canberra, San Diego and London at Parliament House in Canberra on 15 November.
Last year in November, SoftIron opened an advanced manufacturing facility on Australian soil valued at about $5 million in total as a means of combatting “malicious state actors”.
