LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. –
During these fiscally challenging times, saving money is at the top of the Air Force's priority list.
With the recent Air Force network (AFNET) migration, the Air Force is doing just that. The goal of the migration is to collapse base, major command, field operating agency, direct reporting unit and GSU networks, e-mail, and directory services into a single, standardized and centrally managed Active Directory (AD) structure.
"The migration will reduce cost and system complexity through consolidation of network systems," said Todd Haller, Air Combat Command AFNET Migration Lead. "Centralized management of email accounts and the reduction of other servers at the bases will also yield a proportional manpower savings."
Other key benefits of the network consolidation include a "career" email address and accessibility to e-mail, applications and shared drives from any af.mil domain through use of a single Common Access Card login. Personnel will also be able to take their government device (i.e., laptop) anywhere world-wide and be able to securely access their email without a virtual private network connection, Haller added.
Although, inherent risks come with many major information technology projects, ACC has successfully migrated more than 100,000 email accounts, 70,000 personal computers, 3,000 BlackBerry devices and 500 iOS devices.
"The AD account management overhead has eliminated 20,000 obsolete email accounts and 9,000 personal computer objects," said Haller. "We have also decommissioned 863 servers, a 43 percent reduction in ACC's server footprint, and eliminated 2,667 BlackBerry devices saving over $89,000 annually in licensing and maintenance fees."
By gaining certification and accreditation for more than 90 servers that were operating on the network without proper authorization, network security has also improved.
As bases transition, the Communications Squadron personnel and functional system administrators complete the bulk of the necessary work for a successful migration.
U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. David C. Uhrich, ACC Director of Communications, stated, "We worked through each problem as one AFNET team to improve efficiency and effectiveness. Due to this team approach, the migration was successful and relatively transparent to our users."
ACC began their AFNET migration with Mountain Home AFB, Idaho in May 2013 and completed the MAJCOM's total migration with Holloman AFB, N.M., in February 2014. The Air Force expects to have all network cleanup actions complete by the end of FY14.
For information on AFNet migration, Airmen can access AFSPC's AFNET migration dashboard at https://eis.af.mil/cs/afnet/majcom/default.aspx.