AKO on Lookout for 300 Millionth User By Leta Deyerle Army News Service April 04, 2005 FORT BELVOIR, Va. - When Army Knowledge Online's cief of operations heard that AKO had surpassed 290 million log-ins, he decided to put his staff on special alert -- but for a good reason. Lt. Col. Ken Blakely, dubbed "Mr. AKO" by his staff, is personally donating an Apple iPod Shuffle to the lucky one who logs in as "User 300 Million." With an average of about 3.4 million log-ins a week, that should not take long. More information about the give-away is available to users on the AKO homepage at www.us.army.mil The AKO staff recently celebrated another milestone in AKO history. On March 7, Sgt. 1st Class Shawn Johnson became the 100,000th individual to establish an account on AKO's classified portal, the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network. Now the race is on to reach 300 million log-ins. What began as a great idea while former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Dennis Reimer was out running, AKO has evolved into one of the largest and most used intranet sites in the world. In 2002, Reimer accurately predicted the tremendous increase in AKO usage when he said, "The pace is only limited by imagination and how fast the whole Army becomes comfortable doing business this way." Although Army Knowledge Online isn't used with the same regularity by all of its nearly 1.8 million account-holders, it is reaching out to Soldiers, families, Army civilians, retirees and sponsored guests every day. During the past week, there were 3,412,152 log-ins with 602,885 unique customers tuning in to AKO. Why the high volume? AKO offers one-stop shopping for Army information and features a career lifetime email address, online transaction processing capabilities, knowledge centers, distance learning and training opportunities, a secure architecture for classified information (AKO-SIPRNet), a worldwide people locator service of AKO members, and a 24 hours-a-day Help Desk. AKO is enabling Soldiers to plug in, stay in touch, and officials said, in doing so remains a primary component of Army Transformation.

Sound Off...What do you think? Join the discussion.

Copyright 2010 . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

More Military Headlines