The Army has announced it has started migrating enterprise applications and systems to designated core data centersas it proceeds with plans to consolidate over 1,100 data centers.
It said it is also beginning to realize savings as a result of terminating some 800 unused applications out of about 11,000. That means fewer licensing and upgrade fees and fewer opportunities for malware to cause problems.
The Army said consolidating applications (where possible) into centralized data centers in the cloudhas helped it become more efficient and improve performance in some cases. For example, it recently migrated a distance-learning app (Structured Self-Development System) to the enterprise level, increasing bandwidth and making it easier to secure.
According to the chief of the Army Data Center Consolidation Division, Neal Shelley, it’s not always possible or easy to replace a redundant application, with an established user base and years – sometimes decades – of data. But when you can do this the savings follow, as was the case when the Army moved on from seven separate email systems to a single enterprise email system, saving it $76 million in fiscal 2013.
