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2019 DoDIIS Preshow Interview Featuring Kim Kok and Brigham Bechtel
Posted by Jerried Williams on 13 August 2019 11:32 AM

The 2019 DoDIIS Worldwide Conference brings together experts and innovators from the military, industry, government and academia to share their unique insights on this year’s theme: Resiliency, Redundancy and Security: Adapting to Asymmetric Threats.

In advance of MarkLogic’s attendance, I met with Kim Kok, Vice President of Sales for US Federal, and Brigham Bechtel, Chief Strategy Officer for Public Sector, to hear what they’re expecting from the conference and their thoughts on MarkLogic’s attendance.

Why is DoDIIS important to the Defense and Intelligence Community?

Kim Kok: There are only a few opportunities for industry to come together with government in an open forum to collaborate on the latest IT and mission challenges that the DOD and Intelligence Community are facing, short term and long term.

DoDIIS not only provides this venue but is unique in bringing representatives from all of the combatant commands together to share and discuss their individual areas of responsibilities and challenges. For example, dealing with the challenges of near-peer adversaries in PACOM can be vastly different from dealing with the issues of counterinsurgency in CENTCOM.

What did you see last year that was exciting, and what are you looking forward to this year?

Kim Kok: It was great to see the initial prototype for the Machine-Assisted Rapid-Repository System (MARS), which was discussed last year at DoDIIS. The effort is a strategic undertaking by DIA to replace a failing legacy system called MIDB. As the executive agency of this effort, DIA is at the forefront of military innovations, and I’m looking forward to hearing more about the future of the program.

Brigham Bechtel: Last year, I enjoyed the demonstrations on artificial intelligence in support of agency analysts and autonomous weaponry. It was exciting to see the developments with AI algorithms working on object recognition, which could free analysts to do more discovery work instead of monitoring.

I’m looking forward to hearing the latest updates in these areas this year. I’m also interested in learning more about the shift of the Defense and Intelligence Community’s focus from low-intensity conflict to near-peer competition.

Why is MarkLogic attending?

Kim Kok: DIA has openly discussed their challenges with managing their vast quantity of data sets, and the MarkLogic Data Hub for Defense and Intelligence is up to the task to solve those challenges.

MarkLogic provides an actionable 360-degree view of disparate data sets that enable intelligence integration, information sharing, situational awareness and all-source intelligence. For MarkLogic, it’s essential that we share this data-centric strategy that DIA has taken to DoDIIS attendees.

Brigham Bechtel: DoDIIS Worldwide is an opportunity to show interested leaders from Defense and Intelligence organizations the capabilities of the MarkLogic Data Hub for Defense and Intelligence. It also provides the opportunity for us to network across the broader defense community in pursuit of new partnerships, introduce our technology to industry experts who may not be familiar with it and recruit new talent.


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