Approved Marine Corps Platform as a Service Offerings

1.  Purpose.  This message announces that the Marine Corps has approved a set of platform as a service (PAAS) offerings for delivery of Marine Corps business applications.  Per Ref F, these PAAS offerings may be used in other mission areas as determined by the functional area manager (FAM).
2.  Background.  Ref a defines PAAS as "the capability…to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages, libraries, services, and tools supported by the provider."  The Marine Corps has adopted the NIST defined PAAS service model.  PAAS is a capability which is important for application development, hosting, delivery, and operations.  The unguided growth of PAAS increases cybersecurity risks, resource inefficiencies, and operational challenges.  Standardizing the PAAS offerings authorized and used within the Marine Corps is key to ensuring operational effectiveness, cybersecurity, and investment management of Marine Corps resources.  The Marine Corps has accredited and approved the following PAAS offerings:
2.a.  Appian. Appian low-code platform provides capability for enterprise application development.
2.b.  Pega.  Pega provides a no-code platform for model-driven, unified enterprise-grade, agile application development.
2.c.  Pivotal.  Pivotal platform is a unified, multi-cloud platform which runs enterprise applications at scale.
2.d.  Tactical service oriented architecture (TSOA).  TSOA is the Marine Corps capability aligned to the DoD net-centric services strategy (NCSS).
3.  Action. Marine Corps organizations are responsible for budgeting and funding their procurement of PAAS services.  In order to support future planning, organizations currently using a legacy PAAS, not listed in paragraph 2, must identify and report their legacy PAAS NLT 30 September 2020 to one of the identified POCs.  Effective immediately, new procurements and investments in PAAS offerings other than those listed in paragraph 2 must first be authorized by obtaining a waiver from the Deputy Commandant for Information (DC I) through the information technology procurement review and approval system (ITPRAS).  A business case analysis (BCA), cost estimate, and authorization from the 3-star FAM must be included in the request for deviation.  Important factors in the PAAS waiver review will include:  operational requirements, the ability of Marine Corps approved PAAS offerings to provide the PAAS capability requested, cybersecurity concerns, and efficient allocation of resources.
4.  Applicability. This message is applicable to the total force.
5.  Release authorized by BGen L.M. Mahlock, Director, Information C4 Division, Deputy Commandant for Information.