“We are extremely proud of what we have achieved for the US Air Force, producing a successful outcome on a project that many people thought might not be possible.”
Astadia, the mainframe to cloud experts, have successfully completed a large-scale migration project for the United States Air Force (USAF), moving a mission-critical maintenance system to Microsoft Azure.
A 2019 report from the US General Accountability Office (GAO) identified the system as being among the Federal Government’s top 10 most critical legacy systems in need of modernization. Key concerns expressed by the GAO were escalating system costs, aging hardware, potential security vulnerabilities, and a lack of qualified personnel to provide long-term support for legacy technologies.
USAF leaders sought to increase the overall agility of their IT systems while maintaining stringent standards for security and disaster recovery. They selected Microsoft Azure as the platform that could best serve these needs while providing a robust foundation for ongoing innovation.
The USAF chose Astadia because of the company’s reputation as the world’s foremost experts in mainframe modernization. Through the course of numerous Unisys and IBM modernization projects, Astadia has developed a set of tools and project management methodologies that maximize efficiency and thoroughness while minimizing risk.
The USAF sought to modernize a mission-critical Unisys system and leverage Microsoft Azure’s native cloud services without losing their decades-long investment in legacy application code. By refactoring their applications and migrating the system to Azure, the Air Force will achieve annual operating-cost savings of over 80%. Moreover, the deployment of DevOps and Agile methodologies will lead to a 92% improvement in the IT team’s capacity to respond to changing needs and requirements. The project has paved the way for more digital transformation opportunities, such as predictive maintenance programs, accelerated delivery of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced data analytics. Security, monitoring, and disaster recovery have been improved as well.
IT leaders in the Federal government have looked to this effort as proof of what is possible with mainframe modernization, and as a case study in what it takes to make highly complex modernization projects successful. In partnership with Astadia, Microsoft, and Micro Focus Government Solutions, IT leaders in our nation’s military have laid a solid data foundation for lasting innovation, growth, and mission readiness.
“We are extremely proud of what we have achieved for the US Air Force, producing a successful outcome on a project that many people thought might not be possible,” said Scott G. Silk, Astadia’s Chairman and CEO. “We are even prouder to have contributed to an outcome that will help the men and women of the US military to better fulfill their mission.”
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