DOD cloud migrations put some legacy systems on the back burner

The Defense Department is putting legacy systems on hold as it moves forward with an interconnected cloud environment.

DOD is analyzing its legacy applications, many of which are interdependent, and deciding what to do with them long term, John Hale, the Defense Infrastructure System Agency's cloud chief, said during FCW's April 9 cloud summit.

Hale said DISA and the Pentagon surveyed the applications used by DOD’s administrative agencies, evaluating their construct and interfaces to come up with a set of tools and recommendations of how to deal with them in the future.

The result: "Not every application is a right fit for the cloud," he said, adding that there were cases where "moving one application to the cloud is really a detriment if you don't move everything."

Instead DOD is holding off on migrating legacy applications that are central to business operations to the cloud for now, but marking them for possible modernization come budget time.

"Do we allocate funds to modernize that application or move it to a cloud-friendly environment? Those are the decisions being made now that ultimately affect how IT goes in the department for the next 10 years," he said.

This article was first posted to FCW, a sibling site to Defense Systems.