The journey to the cloud can be redefined or thought of as developing cloud like efficiencies within an organization. Efficiencies such as auto-scaling, on-demand provisioning, role-based data access are traits associated with the Cloud and lead to favorable outcomes and remediate existing challenges. As the Federal Government seeks to attain these traits, the vast nature of the Federal landscape calls for a ground up approach to attaining these operational qualities and the Cloud Smart initiative has laid the foundation. As mentioned above, Cloud is not a destination but rather a journey, or rather attaining a Cloud Operational Model. To achieve the efficiencies enjoyed by public cloud vendors today, tremendous organizational and operational changes must be undertaken. Whether this means refactoring applications to make them cloud native whereby they can take advantage of DevOps features such as CI/CD, retraining of staff and/or organizational changes to support this new operational model, these are organizational changes that impact entire reporting structures. Taking into consideration the numerous technology infrastructures in place today in the Federal landscape, to begin immediately realizing the benefits of the Cloud Operating model, we believe that a model with different maturity levels should be implemented along which attainment of capabilities along this model leads each federal entity to developing more of the traits that lead to outcomes that improve service delivery and also reduce operational costs and challenges. While the focus on maturing along this model may imply a single focus on technology, the capabilities developed along the maturity path include People, Process and Technology. People: As operational changes are made, Training and hiring are required to support the new norm. Process: Operational Processes will change. This requires organizational restructuring to support the new norm. Technology: As we mature along the model, new technologies are introduced. An example of what such a model would look like and one that begins to create the Cloud Operating model, would look as follows: Current State: Organizations running traditional 3-tier architectures (Storage, Servers, Networking) Migrate to Private Cloud with Hyper-Converged Infrastructures reducing complexity and footprint, enable Automated Provisioning of resources, improved resiliency and security protections at the data and workload layer. Build upon the Private Cloud with extensibility features that allow Cloud bursting to Cloud vendor of choice, in essence Hybrid Cloud. Build upon the Hybrid Cloud and depending on requirements, add-on IaaS for Service Catalog features, lifecycle management and so forth. OR Build upon and add-on PaaS laying the foundation for DevOps capabilities. Build upon and add DevOps capabilities including Micro-Service Architectures, Continuous Delivery, Enhanced Network Security and so forth. With PaaS and DevOps capabilities established, refactoring of monolithic applications to cloud-native applications can commence. Important to note, this model assumes that not all applications need run on premise as the model above may imply. There may be some applications that can immediately run on approved Cloud Service Providers. In this case, the decision on whether the application requires refactoring as part of the move to the Cloud Service Provider will take place. In other instances, it may take a while to get to the point where a majority of applications can be moved to Cloud Service Providers or the will is simply not there. In such a case, the maturity model described above makes for a great starting place.
The journey to the cloud can be redefined or thought of as developing cloud like efficiencies within an organization. Efficiencies such as auto-scaling, on-demand provisioning, role-based data access are traits associated with the Cloud and lead to favorable outcomes and remediate existing challenges. As the Federal Government seeks to attain these traits, the vast nature of the Federal landscape calls for a ground up approach to attaining these operational qualities and the Cloud Smart initiative has laid the foundation. As mentioned above, Cloud is not a destination but rather a journey, or rather attaining a Cloud Operational Model. To achieve the efficiencies enjoyed by public cloud vendors today, tremendous organizational and operational changes must be undertaken. Whether this means refactoring applications to make them cloud native whereby they can take advantage of DevOps features such as CI/CD, retraining of staff and/or organizational changes to support this new operational model, these are organizational changes that impact entire reporting structures. Taking into consideration the numerous technology infrastructures in place today in the Federal landscape, to begin immediately realizing the benefits of the Cloud Operating model, we believe that a model with different maturity levels should be implemented along which attainment of capabilities along this model leads each federal entity to developing more of the traits that lead to outcomes that improve service delivery and also reduce operational costs and challenges. While the focus on maturing along this model may imply a single focus on technology, the capabilities developed along the maturity path include People, Process and Technology. People: As operational changes are made, Training and hiring are required to support the new norm. Process: Operational Processes will change. This requires organizational restructuring to support the new norm. Technology: As we mature along the model, new technologies are introduced. An example of what such a model would look like and one that begins to create the Cloud Operating model, would look as follows: Current State: Organizations running traditional 3-tier architectures (Storage, Servers, Networking) Migrate to Private Cloud with Hyper-Converged Infrastructures reducing complexity and footprint, enable Automated Provisioning of resources, improved resiliency and security protections at the data and workload layer. Build upon the Private Cloud with extensibility features that allow Cloud bursting to Cloud vendor of choice, in essence Hybrid Cloud. Build upon the Hybrid Cloud and depending on requirements, add-on IaaS for Service Catalog features, lifecycle management and so forth. OR Build upon and add-on PaaS laying the foundation for DevOps capabilities. Build upon and add DevOps capabilities including Micro-Service Architectures, Continuous Delivery, Enhanced Network Security and so forth. With PaaS and DevOps capabilities established, refactoring of monolithic applications to cloud-native applications can commence. Important to note, this model assumes that not all applications need run on premise as the model above may imply. There may be some applications that can immediately run on approved Cloud Service Providers. In this case, the decision on whether the application requires refactoring as part of the move to the Cloud Service Provider will take place. In other instances, it may take a while to get to the point where a majority of applications can be moved to Cloud Service Providers or the will is simply not there. In such a case, the maturity model described above makes for a great starting place.
Austin Foster Redacted Sterling Computers