Army awards contract for upgrade at NETCOM

The Army has purchased 375,000 licenses for software from Quest Software Inc. of Irvine, Calif., to migrate and manage an infrastructure upgrade in the Army's Network Enterprise Technology Command and the Army's CIO office.

Under the multimillion-dollar purchase, the command will use Quest Microsoft infrastructure management products, like Quest Reporter, Quest ActiveRoles and Quest Migrator, to migrate numerous Microsoft Windows NT networks into a single network.

NETCOM will use Quest Reporter and Quest ActiveRoles for operations management of more than 10 Army Active Directory forests, according to a press release put out by Quest. Quest Migrator will be used for the Army's migration from Windows NT to Windows 2000, and Active Directory and Exchange 2003.

Quest Software will secure the infrastructure while reducing software, hardware and management costs, said Daniel Gilbert, who works with FC Business Systems Inc. of Falls Church, Va., a consultant on the project. Gilbert is a senior Active Directory specialist for the command.

Earlier this month, the Army's European Command signed on to use Quest software as well. The command, based in Heidelberg, Germany, purchased the software products to consolidate 248 Windows NT domains into a single directory with three domains.