The U.S. Navy plans to consolidate its networks to establish a more manageable infrastructure as part of the $7.7 billion Next Generation Enterprise Network (NGEN) recompete contract, Federal News Network reported Thursday.
Ben McNeal, program manager for Naval Enterprise Networks, told the publication that the Navy seeks to implement a “domain singularity” and integrate one-off networks into the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI). There are around 140 standalone networks including legacy capabilities under NMCI to date, according to the report.
McNeal said the Navy’s implementation of concepts such as zero-trust architectures enables the service to benefit from a “seamless flow” of data. He added that the Navy is working to modify its networks to support cloud services such as Microsoft’s Office 365.
“We’ve framed out a journey that’s going to take us from being cloud-intolerant — not able to consume cloud services at all — to being cloud-tolerant, cloud-ready and ultimately, cloud-native,” said Mcneal. “We’re still just in the cloud-tolerant stage right now.”
McNeal’s comments come as Leidos, the current NGEN-R contract awardee, faces two bid protests.
