With digital transformation led by Defence Digital and powered by Palantir, the UK MoD will leverage data as a strategic asset, exploiting it to bring enhanced military advantage and greater productivity throughout the entire department, from the headquarters to the front lines
UK MoD awards £75m enterprise agreement to Palantir Technologies. (Credit: ArildV/Wikipedia.org)
The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has awarded a £75m enterprise agreement (EA) to American big data analytics provider Palantir Technologies to support the department’s digital transformation.
During the three-year partnership, Palantir Technologies is expected to collaborate with Defence Digital to enable the UK MoD to leverage data at scale and speed to make quicker and better decisions across defence.
Defence Digital is said to play a significant role within the UK MoD to ensure that effective digital and information technology (D&IT) is delivered to the military and business front line.
Palantir Technologies develops digital platforms for data-driven operations and decision-making.
By helping in developing a data-backed representation of defence assets, workforce, and workstreams, Palantir software combines all the significant data into a single view using a modeling concept called ontology.
The Palantir software collects, cleans and harmonises the data that are integrated from various sources to map it to an ontology.
The ontology concept enables users to view data as objects, properties, and relationships rather than just rows and columns.
Palantir Technologies UK defence and national security head Guy Williams said: “Palantir’s Enterprise Agreement with the MOD will accelerate the UK Armed Forces’ journey to become a truly integrated force.
“We’re proud to expand our long-standing relationship with the MOD through our partnership with Defence Digital, and look forward to delivering world-leading software capabilities to enable greater operational outcomes.”
Palantir Technologies‘ data model would enable the UK MoD personnel to carry out the planning of advanced scenarios, testing hypotheses, and modelling before they would function in real time.
With digital transformation led by Defence Digital and powered by Palantir Technologies, the UK MoD is expected to utilise data as a strategic asset, exploiting it to bring enhanced military advantage and increased productivity throughout the entire department, from the headquarters to the front lines.
Defence Digital Chief Data Director Caroline Bellamy said: “As a strategic partner in a complex Defence Data eco-system, Palantir products and services are helping Defence to become a truly integrated digital enterprise, with data exploitation at the heart of a faster, better, and more integrated Defence.
“A Defence where real-time, interconnected data better informs decision making, our people are digitally connected and empowered, and step changes in digital capability have been made for our war fighters and across our business operations.”