Nasa.gov Migrates to AWS Cloud
NASA has moved its public facing websites onto AWS with zero downtime. NextGov reports that NASA.gov consisted of over 100 sub-sites that were also migrated successfully. InfoZen was tapped to oversee the migration. Sources mention that the migration to AWS took 22 weeks to complete.
InfoZen CEO Raj Ananthanpillai said in an interview that “We like to think it was done in a record time.” Ananthanpillai goes on to mention, “It’s saying that once you have your act together, you can do this in a short amount of time. It doesn’t require years of implementation.”
InfoZen actually won the rights to the NASA cloud contract back in 2012. The project was delayed due to a protest on the contract. InfoZen jumped through all of the FedRAMP hoops and InfoZen’s solutions were approved for use with NASA although some at NASA had objections. Since each of the bureaucratic issues has been sorted out, NASA has been able to continue building its cloud. NASA CIO Larry Sweet told the technical services teams within the space agency that “If you can come up with a reason why this isn’t going to work for you, then that’s a different story, but we really want you to consider this first.”
NASA’s Web services executive Roopangi Kadakia is quoted as saying, “It was great to have that particular IG report saying this is a good contract that got all of the requirements correct.” Kadakia also went on to mention that, “not a one size fits all” in regards to cloud migrations.
NASA’s extra due diligence has really paid off for the world’s top space agency. “Each application has to be looked at from where it is in its lifecycle,” says Kadakia. NASA used this as part of the criteria in deciding whether or not they should proceed with individual migrations of certain apps. “That’s the only way you can find out if it’s the right time for that application to be considered for the cloud,” mentioned Kadakia.
