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IT-GEMS
OVERVIEW
Information Technology Global Enterprise Management Services (IT-GEMS) is a Department of Defense enterprise management services program that provides the platform, tooling, and operational infrastructure used to build, deploy, and support mission-critical government applications. Operating under strict uptime requirements and formal change-management processes, the program needed a more efficient and sustainable way to manage platform operations while maintaining service continuity.
Aviture partnered with Deloitte and government stakeholders to strengthen the underlying platform supporting IT-GEMS. The engagement focused on improving core infrastructure, automating maintenance and deployment activities, enhancing visibility into system health, and improving the platform’s overall maintainability. These efforts advanced IT-GEMS toward its goals of 99.9% uptime, safer deployments, and reduced dependence on overnight maintenance windows.
PRODUCT & SERVICES
- Modernized enterprise platform infrastructure
- High-availability engineering tooling environment
- Automated CI/CD deployment pipelines
- Centralized secrets management platform
- Application health monitoring solution
- Automated infrastructure maintenance workflows
- Dedicated Jira project management platform
INDUSTRY
- Government
- Department of Defense (DoD)
- Enterprise IT
Highlights
Operating under contractual uptime requirements and formal change-management controls, IT-GEMS relied heavily on overnight maintenance windows to minimize risk to mission-critical systems. Aviture helped establish the automation, tooling, and governance-aligned processes needed to support more predictable platform operations, reduce manual effort, and improve confidence in system changes.
Impact
The engagement made the IT-GEMS platform easier to maintain, less dependent on manual processes, and better equipped to support the teams responsible for delivering and operating mission-critical applications.
Working alongside Deloitte and government stakeholders, Aviture helped resolve several long-standing platform challenges, including storage constraints, application availability, and engineering tooling resiliency. The result was a more maintainable environment with improved efficiency, greater system visibility, and increased confidence in day-to-day platform operations.
Key Outcomes
- Recovered 110TB of unused storage capacity, preventing a potential development environment outage
- Eliminated single-instance application deployments by migrating all applications to dual-replica redundancy
- Established a repeatable Kubernetes upgrade process after years without a formalized strategy
- Reduced manual maintenance effort through automated node patching workflows
- Delivered a production-ready Jira platform in a two-week sprint
- Improved resilience of critical software repository infrastructure through high-availability architecture
- Strengthened security practices through centralized secrets management aligned with DoD Zero Trust initiatives
- Increased operational visibility by implementing enhanced application health monitoring
- Modernized software delivery processes with automated governance and approval controls
Challenge
The IT-GEMS platform supported a large ecosystem of applications governed by strict uptime commitments and formal change-management requirements. To minimize the risk of service disruptions, most production changes and maintenance activities were performed during overnight windows, increasing the operational burden on engineering teams.
Over time, the platform accumulated infrastructure, deployment, and monitoring challenges that made it more difficult to maintain and evolve. Critical engineering tools were concentrated within shared environments, application deployments required significant coordination, and limited visibility into system health made issues harder to identify before they affected operations.
At the same time, program leadership sought to improve efficiency, simplify platform administration, and create a more sustainable operating model without compromising governance requirements or mission continuation.
Approach
Aviture worked alongside Deloitte and government stakeholders to identify platform constraints, prioritize improvements, and deliver enhancements through a phased implementation strategy aligned with program requirements.
Initial efforts focused on strengthening the platform’s foundation by improving infrastructure architecture, automating maintenance activities, increasing application redundancy, and expanding monitoring capabilities. The team also modernized deployment pipelines and supporting processes to improve consistency, transparency, and auditability.
As the engagement progressed, Aviture introduced high-availability solutions, centralized secrets management, and standardized deployment patterns that reduced administrative overhead and improved day-to-day platform operations. Throughout the effort, the team balanced technical improvements with the realities of operating within a highly regulated environment where uptime, governance, and mission support remained top priorities.
KEY INITIATIVES
