www.af.mil moves to Cable and Wireless, replaces Sun with Microsoft

The US Air Force has moved its most public site away from the Defense Technical Information Center to a commercial hosting datacenter at Cable & Wireless. Microsoft will be delighted to have replaced Sun as the server platform. In 1999 Microsoft suffered the indignity of the main US Army web site operations staff not only replacing Microsoft servers with Macs but also giving their opinion of Microsoft product security on the front page of www.army.mil.

However, Cable & Wireless have subsequently announced their intention to sell or close their US datacenters, which may mean that www.af.mil will move again. Since this was not completely unexpected, it makes the timing of the US Army's move seem curious.