Project Updates
We are excited to share some big news! The eFORT Relocation Project team successfully migrated servers, hardware and applications for HCPF on April 20 and DOC on May 13. As of April 30, the project is 31% complete, and the team has emptied 55 of the 145 occupied racks at the eFORT Data Center.
The team plans to migrate DPA and GOV on May 20 and will be back at it in July after spending the month of June performing some server maintenance!
Keep an eye out for updates on your agency as the team continues working with agencies to evaluate server, application and hardware inventory at eFORT for migration to the cloud or the Lakewood Data Center and decommissioning outdated equipment. With each successful move out of eFORT, we are consolidating physical IT assets, expanding the use of cloud infrastructure and becoming more efficient in how our state data is collected, stored and used.
We are excited to share a major win for the team who worked with the Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) on decommissioning eight Citrix servers in March.
Fifteen years ago, OIT deployed a system that worked so well that funding and updates dwindled, leaving it to run without proper maintenance. Fast forward to 2023, we faced a challenge: we couldn't apply security patches or updates, and the cost of upgrading the application was prohibitive. It was time to shut the Windows 2008 environment down.
By leveraging tools already available to DOC, the project team found a solution that was not easy to implement but kept the system running while addressing security concerns.
This project has been a lesson for all of us in the importance of maintaining our systems and infrastructure and paying attention to them over time. We aim to proactively identify and address potential issues before they become a larger problem.
Thank you to the OIT and DOC teams who worked to make this project successful. Your dedication and commitment to finding a sustainable solution will benefit DOC for years.
Last week, the OIT Voice team completed Phase 4 of the SIP project updating the phone system for nine agencies in more than 50 office locations. If you’re new here, this effort aims to replace T-1 trunking with Session Initiation Protocol trunking (SIP) for MIPC phones. Before this project, our state phone system depended on a trunking system, making us more susceptible to outages. In contrast, SIP trunking will allow the phone system to roll over to another trunk seamlessly and automatically if a failure occurs.
Our fifth and final phase will be to finish any pending work from previous cutovers to SIP and a CDPS location. Timelines will be established after getting approval from CDPS. Stay tuned!
Months of planning paid off for the Network Security portion of the Network and Security Optimization Phase 3 effort. The work was completed from start to finish before we could introduce it to the newsletter!
In the early hours of May 1, our Network team implemented a dedicated (edge) firewall, or virtual system (VSYS). This internet edge connection is our first-line defense firewall for stopping malware and viruses and will keep network services secure and equipment updated.
Implementing a dedicated firewall better secures the state’s network, improves manageability and shores up our network edges, meeting engineering best practices. The change improves stability and efficiency and is considered an industry best practice.
 Our Mainframe Decommission Program team has begun the hosted mainframe migration effort, which is the project to migrate the State of Colorado’s mainframe to the new managed service vendor (Ensono). To minimize the impact on our customers, test planning is underway. Planning includes what will be tested, how long it will take and who will be testing. OIT will complete the mainframe migration by July 29, 2023.
We are collecting details on jobs still running and a list to work from that continues to evolve. The testing plans for the re-hosting work are in progress, and OIT teams will work hard to minimize impacts on customers and Coloradans as they work towards the goal of decommissioning the mainframe.
The Hosted Mainframe Migration and the mainframe stabilization effort is also known as the “lift and shift” to a new platform. This work is separate from the modernization projects. More information will be shared as plans come together for the modernization effort.
As the work progresses, the team will be back with updates. Be sure to share the ReimagineIT website with your colleagues and customers, and as always, check out future editions of the Tech Debt Newsletter!
The EBT migration team has chosen Google as the cloud vendor and is working to clear the path for the work to begin. Once the execution plan is approved, the migration off of the mainframe will take approximately nine months to complete.
Check out future newsletters for more updates on the EBT Migration Project!
Great news from the MFT Replacement team! They are making solid progress towards replacing the Cyberfusion Managed File Transfer (MFT) application and migrating it off the current mainframe. The cloud team has set up an Amazon Web Services (AWS) server to support the migration, and the firewall team was able to open VPN to help protect any sensitive data.
The scheduling of initial work with CDHS has begun. The team will complete the migration of one job and then share the lessons learned with the other agencies, thereby shortening the development process and the time to migrate this application from the mainframe.
Stay tuned for more information coming soon!
The team is making significant progress and will be 71% complete in early May. The vulnerability remediations for CDLE and GOV are the last agencies that need to complete remediation, which will wrap up on June 7. After June 7, the remaining work is with the internal teams, and the project is on target to be completed on time!
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