Ron has been a long time advocate of IPv6 pushing vendors to put it on equal par to IPv4, thus paving the way for the inevitable migrating to an all IPv6 Internet. At the end of 2014, Ron challenged Brocade once again to focus more effort on preparing the world for IPv6. As a result, Brocade's TAC is now dual-stack in their lab to allow easy replication of IPv6 applications and interoperability. Additionally, Ron set up an SDN testbed in DREN to explore the New IP.

In response to the White House’s strategy document, “Digital Government: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People,” Ric Davis established a shared service model for GPO’s Federal Digital System (FDsys), which provides secure management, preservation and digital signature authentication of electronic content for free access at fdsys.gov. Davis’ model extends infrastructure and capabilities to other agencies, lowering costs and reducing duplication across the federal government while benefitting the public by furthering transparency efforts and increasing the availability of federal data.

Dan is being nominated for spearheading the Navy's new Innovation Cell. The Cell's goal is to capture industry best practices against various business/technical challenges that the Navy has. The expectation is that industry will not only drive the best solutions, but it will provide the criteria used to select a solution. The Navy has a one year timeline earmarked from the time they advertise an industry challenge through the selection process all the way to either a procurement or Navy DAA authorization for a solution to be used Navy-wide. The one year timeline is the initial time goal and they hope they can decrease that in the future.  Even at one year, they decrease the time from conception of a challenge to award by 6-12 months versus traditional procurements and certifications.

Jason Fairchild never allows his vision for breakthrough policies and technology to be impeded by limitations—budget restrictions, inefficiencies and status quo mentality. When asked to sponsor the Autodesk FedRAMP accreditation process, Jason immediately agreed and then obtained leadership approval. His willingness to break the status quo will provide cloud technology benefits well beyond the USACE. Once the Agency Authority to Operate is issued from the USACE, it will suffice for use by other civilian and DOD agencies, as well as commercial organizations supporting them—a game changer for federal cloud efforts.

Dr. Steve Fellini is the chief architect of the large Biowulf Cluster at NIH. The NIH Center for Information Technology’s (CIT) Biowulf cluster is a great example of how federal agencies can benefit from consolidation and shared IT services. The cluster is based on an open standard operating environment leveraging a GNU/Linux parallel processing system designed as a shared resource. It is implemented using standards-based commercial off-the-shelf products from multiple vendors including networking products to provide NIH intramural researchers with a world-class system to assist in solving complex biomedical research problems.

In 2012 when the Pentagon started to evaluate an overhaul of its data center objectives within the construct of new federal IT guidelines, the solution was clear: to improve service agility, network integrity and lower five year lifecycle costs. Utilizing the Brocade Network Subscription acquisition solution, Pentagon was able to use OpEx funds for a complete enterprise wide asset deployment. This tech refresh effectively doubles their bandwidth, reduces the number of ports required, and most importantly, integrates leading edge fault and performance monitoring, all in one platform. Brocade Network Subscription gives the Pentagon complete control of their IT assets. The Pentagon is leading the way in delivering groundbreaking solutions to ensure IT investments best serve their DOD customers’ mission success.

Gregory Gould is not afraid to shake things up, and he repeatedly stands up for and recommends multi-vendor environments, ease-of-use fabric technologies and open standards-based architectures. In October 2014, Greg played the largest role at INSCOM in helping to convince his leadership, as well as leadership from other INSCOM organizations, to participate in a meeting with Brocade CEO Lloyd Carney to discuss the successes and challenges within the INSCOM-Brocade relationship. With his influence and leadership, Gould helped make Brocade a newly significant provider and partner in their network architectures at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, Fort Gordon, Georgia, NGIC in Virginia, and other locations.

Kevin Greene is challenging and changing the entire IT security industry to move from the network security status quo to the critical necessity of building secure software that truly protects our nation. Beginning with the Software Assurance Marketplace (SWAMP), a multi-billion dollar collaborative environment that is revolutionizing the software assurance practices and activities needed to protect our 'software' world, Greene has brought academics, industry experts, government agencies, institutions and individuals from every part of the IT ecosystem (developers, security professionals, educators, and corporate executives) together to force this industry shift to truly protect the future of a software-driven world.

Kimberly Hancher is a tech-savvy federal executive with an impressive record leading government IT organizations. She is a key member of EEOC’s senior executive service (SES) working to eliminate discrimination in the workplace. At the EEOC she is a trusted technical strategist who has introduced several new technologies, policies, programs and strategies to transform agency operations. Infusing digital strategy alongside customer-focused Web based applications systems, she is focused on eliminating antiquated paper-based processes and reducing the administrative burden on agency knowledge workers. She is a bureaucracy buster who cuts through red tape, rises above administrivia and challenges the status quo.

Mr. Henry led the effort to develop, test and evaluate procedures to implement a special operations proven capability and rapidly migrated it to the XVIII Airborne Corps (solving top Army readiness issue) in June 1014 and the Marines in Nov. 2014. This capability was built using government and commercial off the shelf material and adaptive networking wideband waveform. It improved capabilities by increasing bandwidth to the aircraft by 1900 percent and provided the warfighter with enhanced voice, chat, common operational picture and ISR Full Motion Video.

Rob Karas is the chief of the National Cybersecurity Assessments and Technical Services (NCATS) team. His dedication and efforts to enhance operational cyber capabilities that allow DHS to better safeguard and secure cyberspace should be considered for this award. His team provides proactive, risk-based assessments to empower stakeholders to mitigate risks, close capability gaps, limit exposure and reduce exploitation. While the two technology services were once exclusively focused on federal networks, they are now available to state, local, tribal, territorial and critical infrastructure partners across the nation, which is now over 150 stakeholders to date.

In his current role at the NSA, LArish is breaking the status quo by leading an effort to implement open networking using SDN in the enterprise as well as at the Campus Edge and OpenStack cloud environment. Like many large organizations, NSA is dealing with constraints on budget and manpower in the face of an ever-increasing need for agility and scale with an aging infrastructure. NSA is exploring open networking as a way to break the chokehold of hardware vendors. This initiative is challenging to say the least and involves coordination across many different organizations with both contractor and government personnel while maintaining focus on the mission.

George is responsible for implementing the largest Ethernet fabric in the DOD marketplace. Through George's vision ERDC DSRC installed over 25 VDXs including VDX8770s. This foundation enables and prepared ERDC DSRC for SDN and NFV to secure application access and enablement. George is now leading ERDC DSRC to SDN NFV for replacing existing firewalls with a Brocade solution.

Ms. Nather implemented a cutting-edge, multi-tenant development and testing solution for Pentagon customers. The Pre-Production Research Environment Program (PREP) provides users with an integrated, secure, dynamic platform where solutions can be evaluated, developed and tested. Users can dynamically create projects, provision workloads, generate virtual networks and automatically test solution functionality and performance to meet the ever-changing needs of the Pentagon tenants. Her unique approach combined state-of-the-art cloud technologies, network virtualization and multiple vendor packages into a converged architecture that provides “demonstration-as-a-service”, “development-as-a-service” and “testing-as-a-service” to the DOD community.

Masterful execution in the performance of his duties as the action officer for Tanium implementation, Maj. Joshua Rockhill successfully planned, coordinated and managed the expeditious implementation of an IT tool that enhances J6's ability to employ security, network remediation, asset management and real-time status management procedures for the Joint Staff networks. Maj. Rockhill also created the Joint Staff ITEXCOM to analyze IT procurements and projects to ensure senior leadership is fully onboard and approving of actions. Charged to conduct a review of critical procedures nested within the overall JSIN Change Management Process, Maj. Rockhill thoroughly reviewed, analyzed and evaluated processes, identified problematic areas for concern, and developed recommendations for improvement.

Schwartz is what we consider the ultimate disruptor — think lean, agile, and eliminate waste. As a visionary and out-of-the-box thinker, he makes others think and work differently and better. Schwartz has been working to drive the adoption of DevOps, lean and agile approaches across the federal government. His innovative procurement approaches for agile services has been widely admired by industry and peers in shaking up the standard IT organization and federal IT contracting. At USCIS he has instituted DevOps and continuous delivery approaches, moving major applications into the public cloud, introduced user-centric design for digital services with the MyUSCIS and ELIS (agency transformation) initiatives, and transitioned the agency to an open source software stack.

In the summer of 2014, the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) partnered with Autodesk to conduct a groundbreaking reality capture of the iconic USAFA Cadet Chapel. Lt. Col. Patrick Suermann headed the effort as Air Force project manager and sponsor. In one week, government civilians, officers, enlisted, cadets and contractors collected gigabytes of data using laser scanners and a UAV. For the first time, USAFA has a 3D digital model that represents the existing condition of this historic structure and enables unmatched visualization and simulation possibilities. Resulting surveys, models and simulations will be invaluable in planning a much-needed renovation.

The leadership demonstrated by William J. Walders, CIO of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center Bethesda, has enabled the organization to embark on an IT transformation to improve financial transparency. Walders has led his team to create a well-defined service catalog of all IT services for the hospital and region. In addition, he ensures these well-defined services are delivered consistently – not only reducing risk and unexpected cost overages, but increasing service levels as well. This type of transformation aligns IT with clinician needs rapidly and effectively, which will ultimately improve patient care – a top priority for Walders.

Colonel Randy Wardle made significant and lasting contributions to the Department of Defense through his superior leadership and technical expertise while supporting the coalition C4 and Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance interoperability efforts to enable global cyber war fighting capabilities across the combatant commands, services and agencies. Col. Wardle’s efforts were crucial to the success of the J6 efforts to integrate and synchronize policies, procedures, and processes in support of the warfighter. Col. Wardle managed the validation, prioritization and resourcing of over thirty operational warfighter requirements for improved and increased multinational information sharing capabilities related to sixty bi-lateral and multi-lateral network enclaves, including twenty-two capabilities classified as mission critical key networks and processes.

Mr. Marty Westphal demonstrated outstanding and sustained professional competence in the delivery of critical operational command, control, communications, computers, and cyberspace capability and IT innovation to the warfighter on behalf of the Joint Staff J6 and the operational community. His outstanding leadership, technical expertise, aggressive oversight and coordination with members of the Office of Secretary of Defense, Service Chiefs, and Defense Agencies were instrumental in providing requirements portfolio analysis, management review and capability validation across more than 2,300 information associated systems. His efforts to establish both Joint Information Environment and Mission Partner Environment operational architectures and capabilities will result in a flexible framework that provides strategic, operational and tactical flexibility for all commanders.

Mr. Stuart Whitehead created the strategic vision and led the implementation of a powerful, innovative and game-changing cross-domain open source information-sharing framework for the Department of Defense. His innovative leadership resulted in breakthrough improvements for command, control, communication, computers and cyber capability development, including a DOD warfighter, business and intelligence IT architecture visibility and sharing portal, integration of command and control assessments into DOD cyber ranges, standardization of disparate XML-based information exchange implementations across the joint, interagency and mission partner environments, creation of friendly force tracking IT solutions, and development of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization Core Data Framework.

Lt. Col. Williamson is the driving force to transition all JS IT services to a common provider within the Pentagon. This effort is being leveraged as the pilot for transitioning more than thirty Pentagon tenant organizations into a single common IT service provider as part of a DEPSECDEF mandated efficiency review. This paradigm shift in customer support would create a joint base concept utilizing a single IT infrastructure, serving as a model for replication across the DOD. Lt. Col. Williamson is an excellent negotiator/arbitrator and someone who is able to bring together divergent command positions to solve a common objective.

Ms. Winkler has been serving the Department of Energy for over 30 years at Argonne, and the larger Scientific/HPC community since 2001 in her capacity as the technical lead for routing and core infrastructure at the annual SuperComputing conference. Created each year, SCinet brings to life a very high-capacity network that supports revolutionary applications and experiments. It serves as the platform for exhibitors to demonstrate the advanced computing resources of their home institutions and elsewhere by supporting a wide variety of bandwidth-driven applications including supercomputing and cloud computing. Ms. Winkler has demonstrated industry-wide leadership for the HPC community by leading this annual, complex multi-vendor implementation for the benefit of the scientific community.