Project Spartan: The Hardware to Our Software

Two years ago, with my senior engineers huddled around an OEM server appliance from a well-known manufacturer, we shared our disappointment about the inefficiencies, rigidity, and ungainly form that lay in pieces before us. We needed more space, more flexibility with the internal bus, faster storage options, and a sleeker aesthetic that fit our mission to track-and-whack cyber threats on the wire. As our conversation that day moved from the purely technical to aspirational, the end state quickly became clear; Our days of relying on foreign-designed, and built technology were numbered. That desired, almost wistful, end state was no accident, but rather the culmination of many events ranging from distrust of nebulous foreign supply chains that lack any degree of assurance, to a group of rural technology workers raised in blue collar families expressing a healthy appreciation (and economic utility) of 'Made in America'. Standing around that foreign-made server appliance that day was a sort of list rites to the 'way things have always been done', and a silent pact among my team to re-write at least a single chapter of US technology industry history.

The months that followed were quiet, but filled with days of focused research, crumpled notes, and sketches, dozens of hours on the phone, and crafting convincing emails to contacts at key US manufacturers of key components. We filled the space between periods of hustling to carve out a new, and reliable domestic technology supply chain, with planning the hidden details. Developing a new Command Line Interface (CLI), balancing performance requirements against physical constraints, creating wiring harnesses by hand, testing critical network components, and figuring out packaging for the hardware we hoped to one day ship. In time, our outreach to key intelligent component manufacturers started to pay off, one then another agreed to allocate precious domestic capacity to our fledgling cause. In retrospect, landing these key manufacturer relationships may have been some of our most effective sales efforts, ever. Despite what was perhaps doubt on the part of executives at what are now partner organizations, everyone we contacted was clear on one thing, Hoplite was on a(nother) mission, and I think there was a lot of mutual respect established along the way.

After nearly a year we arrived at a point of Our stars being aligned by sheer will, with all the physical, and digital pieces in place for our first hardware builds. Keep in mind that during this time, we had a business to run, customers, and partners to support, and cyber threats to smite. Failed prototypes, fried components, and long strings of obscenities that are still hanging in the atmosphere above Hyalite Reservoir, gave way to success, refinements, revisions, and our first customer shipments. We all breathed sighs of relief, filled with pride tempered by trepidation of supporting the gear that was now in the hands of customers, and partners. Panic of the unknown immediately set in, because no sane group of people manufacturers leading-edge compute hardware…IN THE UNITED STATES!!!  Did we test enough? Did we consider every corner case? Would the Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) be where we need it to be? And a million other concerns came to mind (and still do). Oh, and one more thing, we have mission-critical cyber security services to deliver around the globe. No pressure.

As one hardware shipment was followed by another, and another, we continued to reorient our business around a new found independence from foreign supply chains, and dominance of a few well-known companies that tend to eschew innovation. Deployment options for Active Network Defense (AND), our mainstay cyber security platform, blossomed. High-availability, high-stakes customer engagements that were once speculative became commonplace. New product offerings we had long delayed due to doubts in traditional foreign components quickly became realities. We quickly found customers and partners were in LOVE with the idea of unboxing gear not just designed (sorry/not sorry fruit company), but manufactured in the US.  Mounting rails for our hardware, data, power and console cables were in a rapid-fire second round of planning, and execution; All of which are in mass production in Bozeman today.

At the time of this writing, the Hoplite team have shipped Active Network Defense (AND) Apollo Sensor Appliances, Aegis Firewalls, Ares Internet Routers, and Helios VOIP Communications Manager hardware to twelve states, and two other countries. All of which has been designed, built, and tested at our fabrication facility hidden away in Bozeman, MT. 

On a personal note, I will unconditionally take on any threat, adversary, or challenge with this Team at my side. None of this would ever be possible without a team that shared a common vision for a safer, better world free from tyranny. One team, one fight.

Only Results Matter.

P.S. Behind the scenes, we were slowly developing our long-term Corporate Sustainability Strategy; In our way of thinking, Hoplite was created to protect what matters most, not the least of which is our planet. What could we do to transform our company's environmental impact with a novel approach to delivering Cyber Security Software as a Service atop domestically manufactured hardware? It turns out, quite a lot. What was conceived as a purely technical challenge grew into an effort to eliminate carbon, and other pollutants from our entire supply chain. Challenge accepted. More on this topic in the near future.