National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

The Office of Finance and Administration’s Information Systems Office (ISO) was tasked to develop and implement a true enterprisewide email facility for NOAA to integrate the exchange of email among the different email systems by replacing numerous existing email gateways with one single, consolidated hub through which all inter-organizational email flows.

Historically, NOAA has had nearly a dozen multiple, independent email systems and no single email address directory. Connectivity between the large Banyan network and the large cc:Mail networks has been maintained through numerous ad hoc and independently managed gateways with limited manual directory exchange. NOAA’s dispersed and complex computing environment has made central email connectivity difficult to implement. Directories maintained on NOAA’s different email systems have been incomplete or incompatible, mailing lists were useless across different systems, and sending attachments has been unreliable.

The NOAA Messaging team together with BT Federal specialists installed and integrated BT Federal’s messaging product to meet NOAA’s needs and minimize disruption. This solution eliminated point-to-point gateways and provided uniform addresses for all NOAA employees. The enhanced and simplified global mail lists are used to communicate high-priority information.

BT Federal performed functional testing, confirmed the reliability of all processes and functions, certified the operational worthiness of the system, and fully debugged the directory synchronization process.