NAVSEA

To reduce overhead costs, NAVSEA CIO (Operations) directed RGS personnel to plan and execute the transfer of servers hosting NAVSEA enterprise financial applications from a remote location to the Washington Navy Yard. The project's real value manifested itself as the work moved forward, ending the stove pipe management of 11 applications and replacing it with a common management strategy for a unified application suite. Along the way, the applications were brought into compliance with a long list of Federal Governance requirements.

THE BUSINESS CHALLENGE

It sounded at first like a simple job. Move 14 servers into a consolidated server farm at Washington Navy Yard and prepare them for NMCI. Operating these servers at a remote location generated disproportionate overhead charges for HQ NAVSEA CIO Operations. The only expected complication was that the NAVSEA Enterprise financial applications that the servers hosted could not go offline during the move. It did not take long for the real problem to surface; each application had its own group of stakeholders, funding lines, and support contracts. The applications were built up over time and as separate entities. One of the few things they had in common was an Internet connection to the outside world. It became apparent that the way to do the job was to jump the applications into an entirely new environment, which became known as the NAVSEA Flotilla Farm. As this concept was developed, two other important objectives were added to the project: reuse existing equipment, and collect information about the applications so they could be managed henceforth as a unified suite.

HOW RGS HELPED

The first step was to carefully map the relationships of these applications with each other and with remote systems. The result was the first ever consolidated communications link map of the enterprise applications. This would prove vital when the time came to design the security stance of NAVSEA Flotilla. The next step took months to develop a picture of the configuration management for each application. The issue here was the wildly different life cycles of the seven major applications and the four minor applications. There were parts of the year when it was impossible to interrupt support activities of a particular application. As a result, a comprehensive map of availability dates was created to identify where critical human resources would be available for the project. The financials for each application were examined: programming support costs, maintenance contract shares for each application, use of expendables, and software license fees. There were so many variables that a database was made to keep track of them. Eventually, these constraints pointed to a specific design - a small number of application and database servers (from 14 we reduced to 7) that could host several applications simultaneously. To make it work, the applications had to be upgraded to a standard software release. This allowed applications to be managed by a smaller staff that did not have to be trained in a wide variety of software. Another large issue was Federal governance requirements. The Flotilla Farm is designed to comply with a range of requirements from Presidential directives down to local NAVSEA Instructions. In addition, the Flotilla must simultaneously pass the requirements for NMCI configuration management as well as the DoD Information Technology Security Certification and Accreditation Process. This was particularly difficult as the NMCI directives were still under development, and the field staffs did not as yet have much experience implementing them. Compounding it was the problem that Flotilla connects to some systems that are not only non-Navy, but are non-DoD. Finally, the Flotilla had to coexist with other Navy IT objectives, such as server consolidation and application rationalization. This project often served as a trial run for project elements.

BENEFITS DELIVERED

Documenting how the enterprise financial applications actually work and interrelate with other systems turned out to be just as valuable as moving them into a consolidated environment. Each application team received platform guides that explain how to configure the applications for NAVSEA Flotilla. Teams also received a platform System Security Authorization Agreement (SSAA) that was used as a guide to produce a newer, smaller SSAA for their own applications. The support staff was reduced from nine to four people that provide services common to all applications, such as Unix system administration and Oracle database administration. This is possible because all applications now use the same version of Unix and Oracle. In addition, each application was examined and put into compliance with the Navy's application reduction initiative by ensuring that each piece of supporting software is authorized by the DoN Applications and Database Management System (DADMS). This reduced the license acquisition cost and annual software maintenance costs. Above all, the application life cycles now have visibility at the highest levels of NAVSEA. As a consequence, the lead application moved into Flotilla, PRISMS allows NAVSEA to retire three other financial management systems. This simplifies NAVSEA financial management by giving all departments the same suite of financial reports. The NAVSEA Flotilla farm gives the command the springboard it needs in the final step to eliminate IT 'stove piping' transferring these processes into an ERP solution in a few years. With the applications on a standard platform with common configuration management and a single funding line, NAVSEA will save considerable effort and money when final migration to ERP occurs.