Understaffed, budget-challenged federal agencies know a move to the cloud is going to be necessary to maintain agency efficiency. But with all the options out there, from private, public and hybrid clouds to off-premises and on-premises offerings, it is difficult to determine what will work best for your specific needs.
Let’s take a look at one agency for example, the IRS, when handling social security numbers and financial information, undoubtedly needs different data storage and transfer options than an agency like CMS or USDA, which may have resources they’d like to widely disperse. For the IRS, a private on-prem cloud might be the better answer, whereas public cloud may be a better option in situations where data is less sensitive and needs to be accessible on demand. Even within an agency, requirements vary greatly. And while the IRS is cautious to protect citizen data, it also has data that needs to be broadly accessible.
Despite these variables, the quick and easy answer for a majority of federal agencies would be a multi-cloud approach. This solution offers the most options and can be the easiest to manage.
Effective multi-cloud providers give access to foundational reference architecture that guides the IT department through every situation. Prior to deployment, agencies have to ask what data should go into what kind of cloud, or if it should be in the cloud at all. This kind of assessment, based on the best practices laid out in the reference architecture, is the most critical piece of any cloud strategy.
Agencies need the simplest path to multi-cloud through an integrated software platform, which is the foundation for both private and public cloud environments. The technology should also provide a complete set of software-defined services for compute, storage, network and security, along with cloud management capabilities. This will not only make cloud migration smoother, it will also make managing the cloud easier in the future.
That’s where our experience and cloud experts can help guide. With an assessment, our experts analyze the environment and can identify good candidates for public cloud, which applications are more suitable for on-prem environments, and which should be left alone.
We are certified in the leading cloud technologies to help make our client’s transition to the cloud seamless and successful. Our lead with VMware’s Cloud Foundation allows for easy facilitation of workloads and fast deployment options. Our reference architecture solution helps agencies sort through their on and off premises options, all powered by Dell EMC and Intel.
Our simple, secure and agile cloud infrastructure solution can be deployed on premises and consumed as a service from public cloud. I recently sat down to talk with FCW about how agencies can make the transition a smooth one. Read our discussion to learn more.
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