Geurts: Navy Cloud Migration Showcases Agility, Innovation

ARLINGTON,
Va. — The Navy Department’s recent completion of migration of some networks to
a server cloud is seen as an example the kind of procurement agility and
innovation the Navy is looking for in its programs servicewide.

“The Navy
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) “tech refresh” completed Aug. 19,
10 months ahead of the projected completion date — the Navy’s largest system
migration to the cloud,” the Program Executive Office for Enterprise
Information Systems and Naval Supply Systems Command Public Affairs offices
said in a release.

The effort
went “from cold start to contract in 45 days,” said James F. “Hondo” Geurts, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development
and acquisition, speaking to reporters Aug. 23 at a media roundtable at the Pentagon.

The effort,
which cost $100 million as part of a larger information technology contract,
was scheduled to take 20 months but instead was accomplished in 10 months,
Geurts said.

“The Navy ERP
tech refresh is a major milestone toward consolidating all Department of the
Navy financial systems into a single general ledger, which is essential to the
department’s ability to produce accurate financial information, obtain a clean
audit opinion and improve our data analytic capability,” said Thomas Harker, assistant
secretary of the Navy for financial management and comptroller, who also briefed
reporters at the roundtable.

Harker said
the effort combined eight general ledger systems into to one. Those legacy
systems were based on COBALT or home-grown software.

He said that
the goal of the effort was toward “being auditable” and “being transparent
using modern business practices.”

“This will
increase our ability to do data analytics and provide much better information
for decision-making,” Harker said.

Geurts said
the ERP may have been the largest cloud migration ever conducted in North
America.

Navy ERP now
is available to about 72,000 users across six Navy commands: Naval Air Systems
Command, Naval Sea Systems Command, Naval Information Warfare Systems Command,
Naval Supply Systems Command, Strategic Systems Programs, the Office of Naval
Research.

Navy ERP “is
now entirely cloud-based, operating significantly faster in memory, data
storage and processing,” the release said. “Prior to the migration, Navy ERP
operated on a Systems, Applications, and Products (SAP) server-based Oracle
platform. During the tech refresh, Navy ERP upgraded to the SAP HANA
(high-performance analytic appliance) cloud-based platform.”

Harker said
that one immediate impact of ERP will be an ability to produce reports in 30
minutes that used to take five or six hours. He said the impact will be felt in
improving customer support, getting rid of inefficiencies and enhancing the
ability to make rapid decisions.

He said the
ERP “gives the Navy the capacity to bring on new customers so we are moving the
half of the Navy that isn’t already on the ERP system onto the ERP system over
the next two years.”

The ERP cloud
incorporates rigorous, widely accepted cyber protections, with its coherent
single system reducing the attack surface compared with legacy systems.

The prime
system integrator for the ERP implementation was Advanced Solutions Inc., a
small business.

“The
magnitude of this accomplishment is incredible,” Navy Secretary Richard V.
Spencer said in the release. “The Navy ERP tech refresh is our largest system
cloud migration to date and will enhance the performance of our force.

“I am
proud of the team efforts to accomplish this on an accelerated schedule,
cutting the projected timeline nearly in half,” Spencer said. “The
team managed this through innovative approaches to problem-solving and close
collaboration with integration teams, network engineers and industry partners.”

The Navy ERP program is
managed by Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems’ (PEO
EIS) Navy Enterprise Business Solutions program management office.