Northrop Grumman/Defense Travel System (DTS)

Company: Northrop Grumman/Defense Travel System (DTS)
Industry: Federal
Carpathia Services: Secure Facility, Compliant Managed Services

Why Carpathia?

• Carpathia’s capabilities in secure, compliant managed hosting and its deep understanding of secure data center operations
• The hosting provider’s ability to migrate all of DTS’s data (80 servers and all the associated cabling, routers, switches, and secure telecommunications circuits) within a 24 hour period

Background
The Defense Travel System (DTS) is a web-based, secure, end-to-end system that automates travel and travel management for military and civilian employees of the U.S. Department of Defense. More than five million travel authorizations and four million approved travel vouchers have been processed using DTS since it became operational at all major military installations in September 2006. The Business Transformation Agency (BTA) approached systems integrator Northrop Grumman to reduce operational costs associated with DTS. It was important that there be no impact whatsoever on end-users during or after the migration.

Challenge
Northrop Grumman developed a proposal that included a realistic migration plan, including migration of the DTS data center -- 80 servers and all the associated cabling, routers, switches, and secure telecommunications circuits -- from its current location to a commercial managed services facility operated by Carpathia Hosting. While the proposed data center migration was considered a visionary, unique and highly innovative aspect of the proposal, the migration was also viewed as being high risk. Up to that time, there was no precedent in DoD for moving a data center that hosted a live enterprise-level system.

Approach
Carpathia Hosting began working with the Northrop Grumman team to develop a detailed plan for the data center migration, identifying prerequisite activities and developing redundant risk mitigations to maximize the likelihood of success. Because Carpathia's facilities and processes are designed in compliance with federal IT security regulations, DTS did not have to expend costly additional resources and time on the C&A process.

Solution
Carpathia and Northrop Grumman migrated the DTS data center to Carpathia’s northern Virginia facility in just 24 hours. On the first business day following the data center move, more than 80,000 DoD personnel successfully logged into DTS on the first try. The fact that the servers had been moved to a different location was completely transparent. According to documentation published by the Business Transformation Agency summarizing the DTS migration, “the migration was accomplished in less than 24 hours, exceeding every operational and business objective established by Northrop Grumman and the Government.” The DTS migration is expected to reduce DTS operating costs by nearly $1 million per year, while offering an even higher level of service to users. Additionally, the migration increased the security posture of the DTS administrators with the new secure remote access desktop solution.