The federal government has steadily advocated for its agencies to move to cloud computing in recent years. Today, that often means providing a multi-cloud environment with flexibility and efficiency.
The growth of cloud technology has brought solid security, flexibility, and cost savings to target infrastructures. As a result, private companies have been embracing multi-cloud and hybrid cloud platforms according to their workflows.
As a result of security concerns regarding the substantial amount of sensitive data stored by government agencies, the public sector used to be cautious and constrained when utilizing cloud strategies. However, with the advancement of cloud computing, advanced technologies have been integrated to protect data integrity.
Let’s see how multi-cloud can prove to be a game-changer for the federal government.
CHALLENGES FACED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Data migration is one of the federal agencies’ most critical challenges when modernizing their data infrastructure.
There are numerous challenges associated with data, including security, cost, and awareness of what data exists, why it exists, who needs to access it, and how frequently it needs to be accessed. The challenges relating to security include cybersecurity, privacy issues, and other threats. Furthermore, the initial data migration and subsequent cloud storage costs are factors to consider.
As federal agencies have embraced cloud-smart agility, they can meet soaring increases in demand, new mandates, and new missions and collaborate with global mission partners to protect and serve the public. However, in the coming year, agencies should focus on two key challenges that threaten their cloud-smart progress:
- MANAGEABILITY
Based on the ECI, the federal government uses multi-clouds at a rate of 47%, 11% higher than the global average. As multi-cloud promotes agility, performance, cost savings, and time savings, agencies can ultimately act as responsible stewards of resources.
However, public sector organizations continue to face significant challenges with managing multiple clouds, with 85% agreeing that simplifying the management of multiple clouds is essential to success. For this reason, 75% agree that a hybrid multi-cloud model, an IT operating model combining both private and public clouds with interoperability, is ideal for addressing this challenge. Therefore, federal government organizations should consider hybrid multi-cloud solutions in the coming year.
- APPLICATION MOBILITY
It is critical to enable multi-cloud and cloud-smart optimization by moving an application to a different IT infrastructure. However, the federal government ECI survey respondents also cited application mobility as a challenge to multi-cloud implementations. Several ECI respondents reported that moving apps could be time-consuming and costly, so it is expected that containers and other AI-driven, hybrid multi-cloud tools will be adopted in tandem with multi-cloud deployments to make it easier to move and run apps. According to 75% of ECI respondents, hybrid multi-cloud is the ideal IT environment for the federal government and other public sector organizations as they continue their cloud journeys. In addition, this model will help address some critical challenges of multi-cloud deployments by providing a unified cloud environment that can apply security and data governance policies.
BENEFITS OF MULTI-CLOUD FOR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
In recent years, the federal government has been turning to cloud services, which will only continue to grow in the future.
Most government agencies are adopting cloud computing due to cost savings and its capability to deliver seamless services. Therefore, many agencies are deploying multi-cloud environments to benefit from off-prem public and private clouds.
The federal government should use multi-cloud environments for the following reasons:
- FLEXIBILITY AND PORTABILITY
You can choose from various cloud providers in a multi-cloud environment and get the best services. In addition, switching between multiple clouds reduces the risk of service disruptions and improves uptime, another great advantage of various clouds. They can also have a backup provider if one provider goes down, so their services can remain available without interruption. In addition, many cloud providers offer unique features and benefits that government agencies find helpful.
- A STRONG CYBERSECURITY SYSTEM
The security of federal data is a top priority. Nevertheless, a lack of visibility and control over cloud security practices can raise concerns. Through multi-cloud, federal agencies can choose the right cloud environment and security level based on their specific working models, addressing these concerns. Additionally, multi-cloud environments offer excellent security benefits. Most cloud providers include automated security to keep your data safe. As a result of automation frameworks, you can automate compliance and security policies.
Agencies must select optimal cloud providers and tools to support their objectives effectively. The right tools and security policies will protect your applications to the core. Government agencies must also practice continuous monitoring for better integrity of applications and data. Cloud providers must allow federal agencies to treat the cloud as an operational model while providing insight into security policies.
- CONTAINERS AND DEVOPS ARE IMPORTANT
A multi-cloud environment can benefit government agencies if their development processes are automated through DevOps and container orchestration. Containers are software technologies that facilitate and automate the deployment of applications across multi-cloud environments. The term DevOps (from the words “developer” and “operations”) refers to a culture in which developers work seamlessly with operations to build, test, deploy, and upgrade applications. This technology can benefit government agencies as well as enterprises with multi-cloud environments by automating, enhancing security, and improving agility.
- TRANSPARENCY
Government agencies often need to change how each workload is used and stored. Multi-cloud environments provide that kind of flexibility and transparency. Federal agencies can choose how workloads and data sets are stored, used, and managed in multi-cloud environments, which prevents vendor lock-in and promotes continuous technological advancement. Cloud vendor agreements must be transparent and flexible, from expenses to speed to security. As a result, agencies can scale as their workload changes- adding or removing capacity to satisfy their operational requirements. The federal government not only has a choice in infrastructure but also saves money on technical debt.
FUTURE OF MULTI-CLOUD FOR FEDERAL SECTOR
Due to the risk of vendor lock-in and lack of innovation, the federal government is looking toward multi-cloud solutions to benefit from more benefits and access to more innovative services. The cloud will enable government agencies to meet all their compliance requirements and scale effectively. It will help you with digital transformation and provide seamless agility, readiness, security, and scalability.
Using a multi-cloud approach correctly can secure federal agencies’ data and streamline their operations. The federal government has finally begun looking at multi-cloud environments as a potential solution to security and compliance challenges. These are a few of the capabilities tools offer to ensure that both public and private sector clients can confidently navigate their cloud journeys and implement multi-cloud projects.
CONCLUSION
The government can take advantage of enterprises that treat cybersecurity as a mission-critical function needed throughout every aspect of the agency to complete cloud migrations.
Agencies must better manage identity and access control to cope with migrations and cyber threats. As agencies scramble to meet cloud mandates, more challenges are exposed. In addition, staff, citizens, and contractors may all use data from various sources. The best remedy is to use a single structure for access rights management, to build “zero trust,” and to follow best practices established by the cloud providers.
Multi-cloud migration also requires different skills among IT teams. In addition, virtualization and security requirements are unique challenges for groups accustomed to on-premises infrastructure.
vTech’s multi-cloud management services help organizations decrease complexity, increase governance, and provide visibility into cloud operations and spending when moving to multi-cloud, hybrid environments.
With vTech’s multi-cloud management services, our cloud solution architects will help you build a roadmap to multi-cloud adoption. The robust automation and orchestration tools we provide enable you to manage your multi-cloud service delivery from a consolidated platform. In addition to cloud management, we offer server-less infrastructure, governance, and cloud operations support.
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