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Moving at the Speed of the Mission
with Data FabricAs the DoD presses forward with Joint All-Domain Command and Control(JADC2) programs and architectures the Air Force is working to stand up
technology centers that will not only allow for the sharing of data but for thesharing of data in motion. Our warfighters and peacekeepers need real time
data to make decisions in the field and the traditional database structure,
modernized with data lakes cannot operate at the speed of the mission.
What is Data Fabric?
Gartner defines data fabric as a design concept that serves as an

disparate applications to discover unique, business-relevant

integrated layer (fabric) of data and connecting processes. This

relationships between the available data points. A Data Fabriclayer utilizes continuous analytics over existing, discoverable, andapproach enables software factories that practice continuous

inferenced metadata assets to support the design, deployment,integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) to deploy faster andand utilization of integrated and reusable data across all

automate version control with their internal and external data

environments. It continuously identifies and connects data from

integrations.

Why do we need it?
There is an acute need to avoid the same mistakes of pastsilos where it’s static and asking retroactive questions, what you

data modernizations efforts. Attempting to create yet anotherwant to do is publish the data as a stream and constantly deliver

centralized data lake with all an agency’s data would just add

it for real-time analysis,” said Will LaForest, public sector chiefto data sprawl as existing databases aren’t likely to be going

technology officer at Confluent.

anywhere. More importantly, data at rest in a datastore isn’t
useful when it isn’t being actively queried. Instead, as DoD
has shown with JADC2, there is a real need to start thinking
about creating a central connective tissue that conducts data
across organizations. Doing so allows for data to stay in motion,
becoming available across the enterprise as it is created andavailable to those who need it precisely when they need it.

By removing the storage resting place, you are decoupling theproducers of the data from the consumers. Data Fabric provides
the connective tissue of decoupling all the different actors
within an organization, so they can all produce and consume
independently. This is key to making solutions scalable across alarge organization – even one as big as the DoD.

“Data-in-motion is really about inverting the longstanding
dynamic of data at rest. Rather than storingthe data away in© 2022 Confluent, Inc. | Confluent.io1

Datasheet | Data Fabric Architecture

How do we weave data into fabric?

A Fabric Future

A U.S. Air Force Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase

A data fabric architecture meets all eight guiding principles inIII contract was recently issued to focus on deploying a Data

the DoD Data Strategy from viewing data as a strategic asset toFabric in the Air Force. Run out of the Chief Architect Officecollective stewardship and enterprise access to being designed for(CAO) of the Department of the Air Force (DAF), this projectcompliance. By “dressing” DoD systems in data fabric, our military

aims to invigorate innovation for data centralization using event

can better utilize data to meet the vision of JADC2 and sharestreaming architecture and integrated solutions for easier data

information at speed and scale for operational advantage andanalysis.

increased efficiency.

The CAO mission objective is to ease data visibility with anenterprise data architecture prototype that allows users toaccess previously siloed data, platforms, or producers by changing
users’ interaction with data. A tactical Data Fabric will become
a global “source-of-truth” that will make it easier to integrate
disparate applications by unlocking mission silos and sharing data

For more information on Confluent’s
Government solutions, please visit
confluent.io/government

in real-time between analytics and mission systems.
The CAO solution is utilizing Kafka, an open source distributed
event streaming platform capable of handling trillions of events
a day. Kafka’s enterprise scalability has made it the open-source
industry standard in not just messaging, but event streaming,allowing for real-time processing, curation, and transformationof the data in motion To support the enterprise use of Kafka, they
are implementing Confluent, engineered and released by theoriginal creators of Kafka. Confluent is the mission-ready form ofKafka with significant enhancements for developers, operations
and administrators along with critical security features required
by Federal programs and supported 24/7.

Turning Data Fabric into a full outfit
The Confluent Platform provides security, encryption, andmonitoring capabilities including Confluent Control Center,Role-Based and Policy-Based Access Control, and FIPS 140-2
Compliance. These capabilities allow for the handling of the mostsensitive data sets for critical mission operations while preserving
the speed, flexibility, and scalability of Kafka.
Connectors, pre-delivered integration points to external sourcesof data, are key to the functioning of a data fabric. Confluentprovides and supports a large collection of connectors to makeintegration with the data-fabric a low-no code endeavor andaccelerate mission data integration from existing and emerging
programs. These connectors, unlike legacy systems dependent
on slower transactional REST APIs, allow for real-time streamingof data and avoid time consuming and costly creation of custom
data endpoints.

© 2022 Confluent, Inc. | Confluent.io2