The U.S. Navy completed its largest-ever cloud migration 10 months ahead of schedule, according to a service news release Aug. 23.
During its “tech refresh,” the Navy moved over to the cloud its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, which it uses to budget, track and audit its resources and manages over half of the Navy’s resources. According to the news release, nearly $70 billion of the U.S. economy runs through the Navy ERP. The migration was completed Aug. 19 and is a “critical step” in the modernization of the Navy’s financial management capabilities, the release said.
“The magnitude of this accomplishment is incredible,” said Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer in a statement. “The Navy ERP tech refresh is our largest system cloud migration to date and will enhance the performance of our force."
The Navy ERP touches 72,000 users across the six Navy commands. Previously, the Navy ERP ran on a systems, applications and products (SAP) server-based Oracle platform. It now runs on a SAP HANA (high-performance analytic appliance) cloud-based platform.
“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, in a statement.
The ERP is “now entirely cloud-based, operating significantly faster in memory, data storage and processing,” the Navy wrote. The entire project took nearly three years, according to the release.
"This major transition of our ERP system will not only improve system performance, it provides the Fleet and NAVSUP Enterprise enhanced resilience and survivability that further strengthens Navy readiness and supply chain visibility,” said Navy Supply Systems Command Commander Rear Adm. Michelle Skubic in a statement.
Andrew Eversden covers all things defense technology for C4ISRNET. He previously reported on federal IT and cybersecurity for Federal Times and Fifth Domain, and worked as a congressional reporting fellow for the Texas Tribune. He was also a Washington intern for the Durango Herald. Andrew is a graduate of American University.
