Readying the warfighter: U.S. Navy ERP migrates to AWS

In its mission is to maintain, train, and equip combat-ready naval forces, the U.S. Navy automates many back-office functions related to technology, services, and human resources so that members of the Navy can make informed decisions and focus on their tasks at hand. However, these on-premises systems have historically been disconnected and dispersed, making it challenging to collect, process, and analyze mission-critical information quickly.

To combat that disconnect, the U.S. Navy and SAP National Security Services (SAP NS2) migrated their largest SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) system – 72,000 users spread across six U.S. Navy commands – to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. The milestone — which came 10 months ahead of schedule — will put the movement and documentation of some $70 billion worth of parts and goods into one accessible space, so the information can be shared, analyzed, and protected more uniformly.

The U.S. Navy procured the SAP NS2 Secure HANA Cloud (SHC), an offering for customers to securely move their applications and infrastructure workloads to the cloud. AWS GovCloud (US) is available through the SHC offering.

Bringing the U.S. Navy’s largest SAP ERP system into the cloud increases visibility and availability of data so the Navy can make timely and informed decisions around its financial reporting and budgets, maintenance and repair logs, and conduct advanced analytics.

For example, quickly aggregating maintenance and repair logs is critically important, as maintenance and repair backlogs have kept ships pier-side months longer than planned, as parts go missing or get jammed up inside the massive logistics enterprise.

This IT modernization effort provides important benefits to the U.S. Navy. The scalable, elastic platform will help them achieve audit readiness as well as allow them to make informed logistics and maintenance decisions.

Migrating this workload to the cloud shows that the U.S. Navy and agencies across the US Department of Defense (DoD) can quickly modernize and migrate to the cloud. The U.S. Navy hosted a two-day, lessons learned workshop attended by other DoD agencies seeking to learn about the Navy’s experience. These learnings will be distributed across the DoD.

Navy ERP data is hosted across both AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. AWS Snowball Edges, a data migration and edge computing device, were used to migrate Navy ERP data to AWS GovCloud (US).

AWS GovCloud (US) is designed to address the specific regulatory requirements of United States government agencies, education entities, and other customers and partners. AWS GovCloud (US) is available to US government agencies, government contractors, private and public commercial entities, educational institutions, nonprofits, and research organizations that meet AWS GovCloud (US) requirements for access.

Adoption of cloud computing is critical to maintaining the military’s technological advantage, in garrison and at the tactical edge. By using the security, elasticity, and advanced services of AWS, the DoD can achieve significant cost savings and agility as well as mission-critical insights that enable improved command and control, readiness, and lethality.

The AWS Cloud is the only commercial cloud service provider that can provide government agencies with common infrastructure and services to process Public, For Official Use Only (FOUO), Sensitive, Secret, and Top Secret workloads.

SAP National Security Services Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of SAP America, Inc. that provides a comprehensive, enterprise-scale cloud offerings, software support and services. The cloud offerings include a unique combination of software, services, and infrastructure to provide customers with the optimal application performance and agility for critical applications.

Learn more about cloud computing for defense, AWS GovCloud (US), and SAP NS2.