Officials in charge of the U.S. Navy‘s migration from the Navy Marine Corps Intranet to the Next Generation Enterprise Network expect the project to be finished by Sept. 30, Federal News Radio reported Thursday.
Jared Serbu reports that once the estimated 300, 000 users have moved to the government-owned, contractor-operated NGEN vehicle, the Navy will work with HPÂ (NYSE: HPQ) to perform a “tech refresh.”
“The tech refresh plan will do two things for the network. It replaces old stuff, but it’s the pathway to modernize the network as well, ” said Denby Starling, vice president for Navy accounts at HP, the lead contractor in the project.
“But what we thought was critical during the transition of the network was that the fleet didn’t see any degradation in the service we were delivering, ” he added.
Capt. Micheal Abreu, program manager at the Naval Enterprise Networks Program Office, said the Navy also plans to centralize all of its IT operations within the network, including those that have never been absorbed into NMCI.
“[We] have to evaluate all of those networks and compare them to the requirements on NGEN and see if there’s a delta. If there is, we have to bring that network up to standards, both security and technically, before it’s allowed to come in and order services under the NGEN contract, ” Abreu said.
With full control over its networks, the Navy is also looking to pushing ahead with modernization initiatives such as the introduction of additional mobile devices into the IT environment.
According to the report, the service expects monthly savings of $20 million from taking ownership of the network, as it plans to eventually recompete some segments of the NGEN contract to further improve pricing arrangements.
“What we really need to do from my perspective is get fully instantiated on NGEN, get some run time on the network and learn some lessons from some sort of steady-state time period over the next year, and then evaluate what pieces of the network services are able to be competed for business reasons, ” Abreu said.
