The Army wants to make it easier for soldiers and civilians to access the network, a part of the LandWarNet enterprise strategy, top officials said.
The Army and the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) recently agreed to initiate the migration of Army users’ e-mail addresses and calendars to the DISA-managed Microsoft Exchange 2010 service.
“The Army’s move to Enterprise Email enables users to access their Army e-mail from any DoD location and to collaborate with any Army user worldwide via a Global Address List and enterprise calendar sharing,” said Lt. Gen. Jeff Sorenson, the Army Chief Information Officer/G-6.
Today, most Army users are can’t share calendars or to find contact information for Army e-mail users at other locations, the migration will allow most users to have one permanent e-mail address, no matter where the service sends them, officials explained at the Association of the United States Army annual conference last week.
In 2011, the Army will start migrating Army Microsoft Exchange e-mail users. The migration covers 1.4 million unclassified network users and 200,000 secret network users.
This effort will produce significant efficiencies beginning in fiscal year 2012 and generate annual savings exceeding $100 million in FY ’13 and beyond, the service expects.
“We know we can be more efficient,” Sorenson said. “For example, Ft. Belvoir, Va., has 15 e-mail servers and six different help desks on a single installation. Other posts, camps, and stations have similar redundancies. Our goal is to make e-mail capability more efficient and ultimately more effective for our soldiers and civilians.”
DISA Director Lt. Gen. Carroll Pollett said, “The Enterprise Email partnership between the Army and DISA is a tremendous opportunity to achieve significant capabilities and efficiencies. This is an important step forward for all DoD users, and will serve as the initial catalyst for transitioning DoD towards an enterprise solution.”
Sorenson said, “Enterprise Email is one of several major Army IT efficiency initiatives that support Secretary of Defense efforts to free up resources for other Defense Department priorities.”
Users in the Army Chief Information Office/G-6 and Army Headquarters will migrate in January and February 2011. The rest of the migration will be completed by Sept. 30, 2011, and will include Transportation Command, European Command and Africa Command.
Enterprise Email will leverage Army-owned Microsoft software licenses and the DoD cloud provided by DISA. The Army Network Enterprise Technology Command/9th Signal Command (Army) will serve as the Army ISP for e-mail service.
With fewer servers and administrators, and the elimination of unnecessary seams between thousands of current heterogeneous local networks, security is expected to increase. E- mail storage for most users will grow to 4 gigabytes. The base service will exceed current standards, enabling the Army to skip a generation of Microsoft e-mail capabilities. Enterprise Email also will substantially reduce hardware and storage expenses, and eliminate e-mail and spam-filtering redundancies.