The US Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is setting up a Joint Operational Edge (JOE) cloud in Germany.

First reported by Defense Scoop, the move is part of efforts to expand DISA cloud offerings outside of the US.

The JOE project commenced in 2023, and is part of DISA's OCONUS Cloud. According to DISA, JOE is an "interconnected and integrated mesh of large form factor Edge computing platforms, installed on-premises at DOD locations, that delivers commercial Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service, as well as the necessary DoD enterprise common service offerings."

DISA already has JOE deployments at US military hubs in the Asia-Pacific, and the agency is also looking at bringing the Stratus private cloud to overseas locations.

“OCONUS cloud is both a vehicle for the public cloud to have a joint operational edge — which we call JOE — and there’s also OCONUS Stratus, which we have out in the Pacific, and we also now are just about done with deploying in Europe,” said Jeff Marshall, acting director of DISA.

Explaining the purpose of JOE, Marshall said that when the DoD is in locations outside of the continental US, it experiences network latency and a reduction of performance.

"When you’re talking about mission partners with mission-critical activities going on in the Pacific or in Europe, you really can’t have those performance degradations. So what these products allow the mission partners to do is actually host their most critical applications closer to them, [with] less latency."

DISA previously told Defense Scoop that they were setting up a JOE cloud capability in Hawaii, and another in Japan. Marshall has since revealed that this is now up and running in Hawaii along with the Stratus cloud capabilities, and the Japan JOE is in progress. All three locations (Hawaii, Japan, and Germany) have significant US military bases.

Earlier this month, it was reported that DISA was nearing the completion of its DoD Olympus cloud development and is expected to have a minimum viable product by the end of September.

Olympus, announced in March 2024, will focus on 'common services' that surround cloud workloads, including network connectivity and boundary protection, as well as a basic suite of common services.

The agency is also exploring "retooling" its Stratus private cloud offering to better enable partners to work together in the cloud.