<p>Streamlining of applications is often meant to be a major benefit of migration to the cloud, but the General Services Administration has allowed its offices in at least one case to replicate a duplicative Lotus environment in the cloud.</p><p>Each GSA component has developed its own inventory of Lotus Notes applications for decommissioning or migration to the cloud, and the GSA office of the chief information officer didn't perform an analysis on those applications to look for duplication, says the GSA office of inspector general in a report (.pdf) dated Sept. 28.</p><p>Auditors note that when GSA became the first agency in December 2010 to opt for a cloud-based email system, it faced rationalizing a Lotus Notes infrastructure spread across servers and databases housed at 17 different locations.</p><p>Over the years, GSA has accumulated thousands of Lotus applications on an office-by-office basis; one former GSA official, speaking on background, said many of those applications were developed with no central oversight, or even knowledge of their existence. That plethora of applications has been one reason why GSA long resisted updating its email system.</p><p><a href="http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/thousands-lotus-notes-applications-complicates-gsa-cloud-migration/2012-10-03">Keep reading...</a></p>