Cloud Services on the Way to MacDill AFB

  • Published
  • By Master Sgt. Joshua Bozak and Tech. Sgt. Bryan Terry
  • 6th Communications Squadron

MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla.--MacDill Air Force Base will migrate 6th Air Mobility Wing, except 6th Medical Group, 927th Air Refueling Wing and five other units computer users into the internet “Cloud” under a directive by the Air Force Space Command to realign resources to more critical priorities and outsourcing services such as email. As a result, the dreaded “your mailbox is full” message is soon to be a thing of the past. 

 

Beginning May 30, 2018, technicians will migrate MacDill email from the Air Force Network to the secure commercial cloud over a two day period.

 

After running through the migration steps, users will likely not know they have been migrated to the cloud. Outlook and Skype for Business will look and feel much like the existing Outlook/Lync 2013 service in use today under the standard license, but users will soon notice an exponential increase of individual email storage capacity. 

 

Users who previously had 100 megabyte mailboxes will now have 100 gigabyte capacity in the cloud. As a result, they will now be able to hold two million normal emails in their mailbox. For the typical Air Force user, that’s an increase of 1,000 times the current capacity – or like going from a filing cabinet to an entire warehouse. The new enterprise license broadens Skype for Business capabilities to allow users to share their desktop, an application, or whiteboard with multiple cloud users.

 

This new cloud-based system will offer greater storage options, along with support for mobile devices and thin clients, without compromising strict security requirements while adding redundant power, facilities, and components with a 99.9 percent uptime reliability rating.

 

“As the migration approaches, we will send e-advisories with instructions for MacDill users to print so they’re prepared the morning of the migration,” said Lt. Col. Reynaldo Champion, commander of the 6th Communications Squadron. “If the migration goes as planned, users will follow these directions and be fully operable in the cloud.”

 

As MacDill approaches its projected start date, an Air Force Network Integration Center team will work with 6th CS technicians to migrate MacDill’s 9,000 users. To ensure a smooth transition to the cloud, look for future 6th CS generated e-advisories for additional migration related information. 

 

Email is the first of the Microsoft Office 365 services the Air Force is migrating to a cloud-based service. Beginning in late summer, users will receive a second cloud-based service, Skype for Business. Cloud-based SharePoint and OneDrive are also slated to start fielding this fall and into 2019.