US Army CIO Dr Raj Iyer has applauded the successful migration of three of the Army's most complex ERP systems to the cloud – with the Army most recently taking its Logistics Modernization Program “LMP” from on-premises servers to a hyperscaler environment in a 24-hour operation that involved over 200 personnel.
The LMP, which is used by over 23,000 people across 50 global locations, is an SAP ERP system that underpins the Army's supply chain -- one of the largest in the world -- hosting data on equipment readiness, asset management, arms depots, and more. The system manages seven million transactions daily and is integrated with more than 80 DOD systems. It has been described as the Army's "core logistics IT initiative".
US Army CIO Dr Raj Iyer -- appointed in early 2021 -- noted on LinkedIn: “Really proud of the fact that the Army has migrated three of our most complex SAP based mission critical ERPs to the cloud.
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" In each case we achieved both cost savings and mission effectiveness compared to hosting at our on-premise data centers. Kudos to ECMA in the office of the CIO and partners in PEO EIS, AMC and OBT to make this happen."
The Army’s first ERP to migrate to the cloud was the General Fund Enterprise Business System in July 2020, followed by Army Enterprise Systems Integration Program Hub in January 2021. Both, like the LMP, have moved from on-premises systems to the Army’s new cArmy cloud-based environment which earlier reports suggest comprises shared services available based on both AWS and Microsoft Azure.
(Earlier 2019 Army reports point to familiar challenges around legacy ERP systems that these migrations are designed to tackle, noting at the time that "costs have ballooned.. years of customizing core functionalities and of decentralized hardware and software strategies have made ERP integration efforts costly" and adding that "support service contracts should shift away from buying capacity to buying outcomes.")
Army ERP migration: LMP only offline for 2.5 days
“Due to countless hours of planning, practicing and prepping, the migration was a resounding success that resulted in the system only being offline for two-and-a-half days versus the originally planned four days” a US Army press release noted -- a genuinely impressive achievement.
Colonel Donald Burton, project manager, added: “Having the Army’s national-level logistics and financials in the cloud makes them more visible, accessible, understandable, trusted, interoperable and secure. Cloud-based data enables leaders to make data-informed decisions at the speed of operational relevance. Put simply, it means having instant data to make instant decisions that best support our Soldiers and operations.”
