NMCI: A Lose-Lose Situation

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040318.html

NMCI, as it is rolling out today, has few boosters in the U.S. military. The transition has been awkward and far more expensive than it was supposed to have been. While someone may argue that NMCI has improved military readiness or saved money, it is almost impossible to prove either claim. It isn’t clear, in fact, that the U.S. Marines are still even a part of NMCI, though the Marines’ own NMCI web site doesn’t say that. What IS clear is that the whole NMCI experience is a prime example of how NOT to buy IT services.

Under NMCI, even moving a PC from one side of the room to another is supposed to require a call to EDS. But there are limits to NMCI. There can be no application development on NMCI machines, for example, so Navy software developers (they do exist) have to use the NMCI machine for e-mail and their old PC for writing code, with the two machines on completely different networks. So much for network simplification.

All of the NMCI machines run Windows 2000, which is supposed to increase network security. Yeah, right—as long as Linux boot floppies can be kept off the base.

Once NMCI is fully implemented, the Navy will have a whole new computer network owned by someone else. The Navy won’t be able to do anything it couldn’t do before, and because of forced application streamlining, there will be some things the Navy used to do with its PCs that it will no longer be able to do at all.