NMCI omits legacy migration

When the Navy drafted the Navy Marine Corps Intranet contract, it overlooked how to migrate existing legacy systems to the new service, according to a Navy senior official.

Charles Arcadipane, a senior information officer for the Naval Air Systems Command Research and Engineering Group, said the NMCI contract awarded to vendor Electronic Data Systems Corp. does not address how to migrate existing applications to the new Microsoft Corp. Windows 2000-based platform.

On average, an organization the size of Navair has 59 legacy applications, Arcadipane said. But Navair — with about 28,000 employees — actually has more than 6,000 legacy applications. And about 1,500 of those are "complex enough to need engineering work to integrate into NMCI," he said, speaking Tuesday at the Government CIO Summit, sponsored by FCW Government Technology Group and held in Kiawah Island, S.C.

Preservation of research, development, test and evaluation legacy application connectivity "was left out of the contract." In the meantime, Navair is paying to maintain old systems and also paying about $2,500 per seat for desktop systems so its users can receive e-mail. Other agencies likely are facing similar challenges, Arcadipane said.

However, the Navy is beginning to address the issue, and once it's up and running worldwide, NMCI will provide better connectivity throughout the Navy Department, faster service, and more timely technology refreshes, Arcadipane said.