Work on the Defence department’s billion-dollar new data centre capability has been set back.

Defence signed an eight-year centralised processing contract with Leidos Australia – formerly the IT services arm of Lockheed Martin – in 2014, intended to cut costs and simplify Defence’s massive IT environment.

Leidos was brought in to slim down Defence’s data centre footprint from 280 heavily-used and increasingly-obsolete computer rooms to 11 local and three international facilities hosting a private cloud network.

The 11 domestic centres have been commissioned, but the three international centres are still up in the air.

The private cloud setup was made operational in late 2015, but reports say the department has hit a hitch in deploying it to the 14 local and international facilities.

Defence is also struggling to shift business applications into the new environment, leading to set backs in the delivery of full operations.

More information is available at tech news outlet, iTnews.