The UK’s Ministry of Defence has awarded Deloitte £2 million ($2.5m) as it tries to migrate its legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to the cloud.

The MOD plans to close its data center and shift to Oracle Cloud, but has struggled with the move.

First reported by The Stack, the April contract comes after a £3.9m ($4.9m) November contract extension. The MOD said that “unforeseen” challenges and "complex underlying design issues" meant that the project has dragged on beyond its initial deadline.

Deloitte was originally awarded a £6.5m ($8.1m) systems integrator contract back in August 2021 to move the legacy and semi-proprietary payroll and HR software to Oracle Human Capital Management (OHCM) Global Payroll (GP), Oracle Expenses and Workforce Compensation as an option.

In the latest additional contract, the MOD said that only Deloitte "have the current specific functional and technical know-how of the Authority’s Payroll, as well as use tools available to support data migration and Payroll Comparison Testing, used to date, to verify and validate and assure the current build and provide further assurance once the mandated changes are made within the necessary timeframe."

The MOD said that it had to change the scope and design of the projects due to the "unforeseen amount of data discrepancies identified," which were then "exacerbated by complex underlying design issues identified in the legacy Payroll system."

But the MOD warned that it cannot keep delaying the move, as it plans to close down the data center it currently uses by Q3 2023.

The closure is likely part of the MoD's Defence Estate Optimisation program; a 25-year strategy launched in 2016 to reorganize the MoD's real estate holdings. It's unclear which locations have data centers that might be affected by the initiative, but sites set to close in 2023 include the Defence Business Services' (DBS) Finance site in Liverpool and its location in Cheadle Hulme in Stockport, Greater Manchester.