ALTESS’ customer-centric focus takes center stage

Back in 2019, Headquarters, Department of the Army (HQDA) requested PEO Enterprise’s help to provide information technology (IT) services and support in migrating 57 HQDA systems from the Pentagon data center to the commercial cloud — and later to the Army’s enterprise cloud platform, cARMY, for modernization in alignment with the Army’s digital transformation. 

Enter PEO Enterprise’s Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Enterprise Systems and Services (ALTESS). At the time, the Army had a small presence in the commercial cloud. ALTESS built out everything needed to support the HQDA applications and assisted in migrating the existing systems.  

Of the 57 HQDA systems, one of the largest and most critical to the Army’s legal affairs landscape was the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps’ JAGCNet system, supporting the Office of the Judge Advocate General (OTJAG). JAGCNet is not just for the Army JAG Corps but for the entire Army, with 87 applications and thousands of databases supporting all aspects of military justice case management — from filing a claim, to court martials, to the appellate process and beyond. 

“JAGCNet is the JAG Corps’ weapons system,” said Tom Oliver, deputy chief information officer for the JAG Corps and chief of the IT division at the U.S. Army Legal Services Agency — and ALTESS’ partner for the JAGCNet migration and modernization. 

ALTESS’ technical undertaking was enormous. In early 2018, the first phase of its work involved migrating the 57 systems from the Pentagon data center to the commercial cloud, working against an aggressive delivery timeline. Phase one of the project — from starting the migration process to having working systems — took six months to complete. The second phase of the project involved modernizing the 57 systems into cARMY, a lengthy process that began in 2020 and wrapped up in July 2024. 

Hosting HQDA systems in a commercial cloud is not as simple as using the existing infrastructure. During the second phase, ALTESS built the environment that allowed the 57 systems to function on the DOD network. As such, ALTESS helped the JAG Corps recode, rewrite parts of its applications to fit into a modern platform as a service architecture, and design and configure the architecture. 

“There are a lot of supporting services that are needed to host an Army system,” said Andrew Parr, ALTESS’ engineering division chief. “The [Army system] needs certain foundational IT services to support the applications. None of that existed.” 

“The commercial cloud — it’s commercial,” ALTESS’ chief technology officer Jordan Clark said. “It doesn’t have access to the DOD network. It doesn’t have access to Army cybersecurity tools. All of those had to be built and provided.” 

“That’s where [ALTESS] came in to build those out,” Parr added. “We knew what [those things] were and what needed to be done.” 

For the JAGCNet system specifically, execution was made possible through upfront planning, proper resourcing, delivering iteratively and, most importantly, by developing and maintaining an exceptional relationship with Oliver and the JAG Corps team. 

“I consider [ALTESS] teammates,” Oliver said. “The partnership we have is one of the best I’ve experienced in my [nearly 40-year] career. It’s absolutely amazing. ALTESS never ceases to amaze me.”  

“ALTESS is a customer-centric organization,” said Richard (Boyd) Williams, ALTESS’ product director. “Our customer base is the reason we exist. We’ve enjoyed a tremendous partnership with OTJAG, and we’re going to continue that in the future.” 

Williams emphasized that ALTESS’ relationship with Oliver and his team was key to the success of ALTESS’ efforts in migrating and modernizing the JAGCNet system. 

With ALTESS’ work complete and the foundation established, the JAG Corps is set up for a bright future as it prepares to launch forward with new initiatives — something Oliver could not say when he joined the JAG Corps in 2020. Oliver credits ALTESS and its efforts for getting the JAGCNet development, test and production systems migrated and modernized on cARMY. 

“I have all the confidence in the world and their technical abilities,” Oliver said, praising ALTESS for “getting after some really hard problems,” its responsiveness and the level of trust he has in everyone from top to bottom. “I’m very excited about the future because I know that with the relationship between ALTESS and the OTJAG, there’s nothing we can’t do going forward.”