OutSystems, provider of the industry leading OutSystems Platform application development environment, announced today a contract with the United States Department of Defense to aid the Army’s pursuit of data center consolidation. The deal provides the Architecture Services Division of the Software Engineering Center, part of the Army’s Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM) with a license for OutSystems’ Platform, supporting services to deliver the first migration project and training for initial rollout to Army personnel.

As part of the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative , U.S. Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel has put in place a plan to consolidate 962 data centers by 2015. A primary component of this strategy is the creation of a private cloud infrastructure. Motivated by this initiative, CECOM’s Software Engineering Center (SEC) needed a high-performance application development and delivery environment that could function with Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) capabilities.

OutSystems’ Platform provides SEC with a rapid application development (RAD) PaaS solution that works out-of-the-box and is easily leveraged in the Army’s new private cloud environment. Beyond being able to quickly develop new applications in the cloud, OutSystems Platform provides the Army’s IT personnel with the ability to quickly, safely and efficiently migrate legacy systems to the new cloud architecture.

OutSystems Platform’s first test was a project to migrate a complex existing system to the cloud infrastructure. The selected system initially required two-and-a-half years to develop and deploy, but the efficiency of OutSystems Platform is allowing the application to be re-delivered in only 16 weeks, all while adding new features including a mobile interface. The final application went to production in early November.

Paulo Rosado, CEO, OutSystems