NATO engages Accenture and Leonardo for a secure cloud project valued at €200 million.
NATO is seeking a reliable cloud solution under pressure. Its technological agency has signed a contract valued at approximately €200 million with Accenture and Italy's Leonardo to create one. Accenture announced the agreement on Tuesday, made during the NATO summit in Ankara.
The program is referred to by NATO as the Protected Business Network. It aims to provide the Alliance with a unified, classified cloud environment where commanders and staff can share information and collaborate across all domains. The focus is on resilience: a system designed to remain operational amid attempts by attackers to disrupt it.
Details of the agreement
Accenture and Leonardo will be responsible for designing, building, and managing the core platform over a period of seven years, utilizing a multi-cloud infrastructure provided by NATO’s agency. The platform will accommodate around 29,000 users throughout the Alliance. The North Atlantic Council has sanctioned it as an Alliance-wide capability.
The initiative replaces NATO’s fragmented legacy systems with a unified cloud model and standardized engineering approaches. This will facilitate the faster deployment of new digital services. Leonardo contributes a Zero Trust security framework along with its own AI-enabled multi-agent platform for cybersecurity.
A European foundation
The selection of partners is just as significant as the technology itself. The contract has been awarded to Accenture’s EMEA division and Leonardo, an Italian defense company, rather than a U.S. contractor. This aligns with a broader European initiative to develop its own defense software and secure military cloud, reducing reliance on American suppliers.
This development comes at a crucial time. Concerns about U.S. control over cutting-edge AI have loomed over the Ankara summit, coupled with pressure on allies to eliminate untrusted equipment and reconstruct their networks. Establishing a domestic cloud infrastructure appears to be part of the response to these challenges.
Importance of the initiative
Defense increasingly resembles a software-centric issue. Aspects such as speed, secure data, and interoperability are becoming just as important for readiness as physical hardware. NATO is counting on a modern cloud to facilitate quicker responses and withstand attacks, with European oversight. Funding is also shifting in this direction, with new investments flowing into European defense technology. The construction begins now, with the real challenge lying ahead when faced with attempts to compromise it.
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NATO engages Accenture and Leonardo for a secure cloud project valued at €200 million.
NATO has finalized a seven-year agreement worth approximately €200 million with Accenture and Leonardo to create a secure cloud infrastructure, known as the Protected Business Network, for the Alliance.