Army weeks away from enterprise e-mail rollout

By Jared Serbu
Reporter
Federal News Radio

The Army has nearly finished testing its implementation of cloud-based enterprise e-mail, and plans to start migrating users to the system soon, the service’s top IT official announced this week.

The Army’s Network Enterprise Technology Command (NETCOM) recently hosted a week-long training session for the service components who will be the first to migrate, Mike Krieger, the Army’s acting chief information officer wrote in a blog Wednesday. The migration will start on Feb. 15, beginning with the CIO’s office, and the headquarters portions of NETCOM and the Research, Development and Engineering Command. The Army still wants the entire service moved to the cloud by the end of 2011, Krieger wrote.

The Army expects the new e-mail system, hosted by the Defense Information Systems Agency, to save a significant amount of money in software licensing alone, then-CIO Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson told an IT conference in October Sorenson retired in November.

“We’re paying well over $100 for the seat we operate today with Microsoft,” he said. “As we move in to the DISA cloud, that cost will drop to something less than $39 per seat. So, there are significant savings that the Army will accrue.”

In other Army IT news, Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Friday nominated Maj. Gen. Rhett Hernandez, the commander of Army Forces Cyberspace Command, for a third star. His promotion to Lieutenant General would require Senate confirmation.

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