Air Force to issue enterprise services plan

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Air Force officials soon will release a strategy about how it will make information technology capabilities available servicewide using the Internet, according to the Air Force's top IT official.

The Air Force Enterprise Services plan will let the service more easily deliver timely information to airmen through net-centric operations, said John Gilligan, Air Force chief information officer speaking today at the Montgomery IT Summit sponsored by the local affiliation of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association.

The draft document will explain how the Air Force will deliver several IT services via the Web. They include:

Collaboration.

Discovery.

Messaging.

Mediation.

Enterprise services management.

Enterprise security.

Application hosting.

The Defense Information Systems Agency approved release of the Air Force's Enterprise Services plan as it issues the military's Net Centric Enterprise Services strategy, Gilligan said. "We can move faster. We don't have to get all the military" aligned, he said.

The new plan follows the Air Force's two-year-old initiative to manage the service as an enterprise. The effort started with computer network and server consolidation, which today yields the Air Force $200 million a year in cost savings and allowed service officials to reallocate 1,000 personnel from business IT work to warfighting IT ones, Gilligan said.