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NAVOCEANO Dedicates IT Center

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS110513-18
5/13/2011

By Lanee Cooksey, Naval Oceanographic Office Public Affairs

STENNIS SPACE CENTER, Miss. (NNS) -- The Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO) located at John C. Stennis Space Center, Miss., held a ribbon-cutting and dedication ceremony May 12 for a state-of-the-art, 2800 square feet, computer facility that will serve the office well into the future.

NAVOCEANO Commanding Officer Capt. Brian Brown welcomed the audience that included Patty Williams, widow of former long-time employee and visionary, Daniel H. Williams, for whom the new Oceanographic Information Technology Center was named.

In opening comments Capt. Brown said, "Today we honor Mr. Dan Williams who, among other accomplishments, was responsible for transitioning the office from a mainframe structure to a distributed data center and overseeing the building and installation of the first Supercomputer at NAVOCEANO that advanced our computing capabilities."

Williams, a former mathematics teacher and director of the Computer Division for System Development Corporation at NASA's Slidell Computer Center, came to NAVOCEANO in 1982 as Director, Plans and Management Division. He subsequently became the Department Director for the Information Systems Department as well as for the Integration and Technology Directorate.

He established and led the team that drafted the procurement package to acquire the Primary Oceanographic Prediction System, the forerunner to the Major Shared Resource Center, now known as the Defense Shared Resource Center (DSRC). Williams oversaw the Supercomputer Department until his official retirement in March 1997.

Other speakers during the event included Iris Moore, director of the Information Systems Division, and Engineering Department Director Mark Boston who presented Williams with a commemorative plaque. Williams' eldest son Ted expressed gratitude on behalf of the family for this honor bestowed on his father posthumously.

The Dan H. Williams Oceanographic Information Technology Center will host information technology (IT) assets, including High Performance Computing, virtual clusters, the NAVOCEANO web presence and data collected over the past 40 years. NAVOCEANO's data holdings total approximately 1 petabyte of irreplaceable oceanographic data. The facility will serve as the central NAVOCEANO IT hub and data repository for years to come.