I was recently able to participate in an industry perspectives piece through government executive magazine’s government business council. The piece was entitled, “Maintaining your legacy, adopting new technologies: integrating the cloud.” In this article, we reviewed how agencies can quickly and securely adopt cloud strategies in mixed infrastructure environments.
We discussed the importance of focusing first on desired mission outcomes, not specific vendors or technologies, then working to standardize with reference architectures like FlexPods. We identified that cloud is a multi-pronged, multi-phased strategy and no one SKU can enable quick adoption. For many of the current initiatives, like cloud first or shared services, agencies should look for partners that can provide proof of concepts. This is very important, as receiving lessons learned without risking the production environment is a critical component to success.
Additionally, we talked about how IT staffing skills change in a cloud environment. Success in these environments requires many non-technology based skills, so finding personnel you can train to jump between technology and business discussions is also important.
Lastly, we discussed security and multi-tenancy. There is a lot of conflicting information about these topics. When deciding to transition to the cloud, take time to understand the real risks to your workloads in a shared services or multi-tenant environment.
How do these recommendations align with your current challenges and opportunities? I encourage you to read more of this interview to gain insight into adopting a cloud strategy.