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Office 365 collaboration tools now available across Navy

The Navy has all 472,000 users on new O365 collaboration tools, but is still working on getting 272,000 of them access to a new email platform.
Navy telework, DOD telework
Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Natalia Murillo, a native of San Diego, participates in a video conference with Navy Public Affairs Support Element (NPASE) West during a drill weekend in May 2020. (U.S. Navy / Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Natalia Murillo)

The Department of the Navy says it has moved all its 472,000 users to a Microsoft-based collaboration platform, marking a major milestone in the broad migration to a cloud-based office suite of tools.

The Office 365-based system gives sailors, Marines, civilians and contractors access to Microsoft Teams, chat and remote-based work systems. The project, called Flank Speed, represents the Navy’s version of a broad new cloud-based DOD365 remote and in-person suite of tools that provides a similar experience to the Commercial Virtual Remote environment created for the pandemic, but it has enhanced security measures that can handle information at the military’s Impact Level-5.

“The Navy has successfully enabled accounts for all users originally intended to have access to the Flank Speed collaboration capabilities in [fiscal 2021]. Full migration of remaining users throughout the Navy will continue through the rest of [fiscal 2022],” a Navy spokesperson said.

Some related tasks are incomplete. Users that remain in an on-premise Navy email system must still be migrated to O365’s email system. A Navy spokesperson said the department plans to move the last 272,000 email accounts to the Microsoft Office email system by the end of the fiscal year.

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As of now, 200,000 users have been fully migrated to both the collaboration platform and the cloud-based email system. The old system users are being moved off of is an on-premise email system run by the Navy.

The Navy had missed initial deadlines in its migration when 138,000 users had yet to be transferred — or “enabled” in the Navy’s terms — to the new collaboration tools by Oct. 1. Now that all users in the department have access to the Microsoft tools, the next step remains moving them to the cloud-based email system that will give them a new “us.navy.mil” address, according to the spokesperson.

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