The U.S. Department of Defense formally authorizes Grafana, Grafana Enterprise, and Loki for its 100,000 developers

Not so long ago, development teams working for the U.S. Department of Defense could take anywhere from three to ten years to deliver software. “It was mostly teams using waterfall, no minimum viable product, no incremental delivery, and no feedback loop from end users,” Nicolas M. Chaillan, Chief Software Officer of the U.S. Air Force, said in a CNCF case study. “Particularly when it comes to AI, machine learning, and cybersecurity, everyone realized we have to move faster.”

So in 2018, the DoD launched the Enterprise DevSecOps Initiative to modernize DoD software development in order to deliver secure, resilient applications “at the speed of relevance.” The initiative included a mandate to use Kubernetes container orchestration and other open source technologies and the establishment of Iron Bank, a rigorously vetted repository of digitally signed, hardened container images for best-of-breed development tools and software capabilities.

Today, we’re pleased to announce that Grafana, Grafana Enterprise, and Grafana Loki have received formal authorization from Iron Bank, which allows the 100,000 employees and contractors working on Department of Defense software, both classified and unclassified, to easily select and immediately deploy our software without additional approvals and security certifications. Prometheus, the CNCF monitoring project that Grafana Labs heavily contributes to, has also been authorized by Iron Bank.

“DoD teams need the best tools to build critical applications better and faster,” said Chaillan. “Grafana is a critical option for our developers as a unique visualization and dashboarding capability. Its interoperability with a multitude of data sources is crucial for the DoD; we’re one of the largest organizations on the planet, and we know that one size doesn’t fit all. Iron Bank authorization for Grafana, Prometheus, and Loki gives our teams instant access to powerful observability tools that are essential for keeping DoD software running reliably and having the right insights.”