Page 11 - FCW, April 2017
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Office, which administers the federal shared service ecosystem, released a request for information asking for descriptions of any new or existing SaaS offerings applicable to key shared service areas, including financial management, human resources, acquisitions and IT.
The cloud is also is expected to get a push from continued efforts to consolidate and optimize data center operations. OMB’s latest guidelines on data center optimization, released Aug. 1, called for increased use of both shared services and the cloud. The stage is set for a new era of cloud-based operations.
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 THE NEW ERA OF THE CLOUD DEMANDS A NEW TOOLKIT
The cloud is maturing as a platform—and prevailing cloud strategies are maturing as well. Agencies are taking a more thoughtful, considered approach. No longer a novelty or an experiment, cloud-based platforms are becoming an integral part of government agency strategy, whether public cloud, private cloud, or more often a hybrid model. This new face of the cloud requires a new toolkit to properly manage the increasing volumes of data and apps migrating to the cloud.
SOFTWARE-DEFINED EVERYTHING: The new era of the cloud is driven by software-based technologies. Software-defined computing, networking and storage are critical for properly and comprehensively centralizing and migrating existing services to the cloud.
This software-defined infrastructure helps ensure the cloud’s promise of performance,
agility and security.
APPLICATION MANAGEMENT: It’s not just data that is being migrated to the cloud, but also an agency’s portfolio of applications. So agencies need a way to monitor and manage those applications. Some applications may reside in the public cloud, others in a private cloud, but being able to manage them all through a single dashboard is essential.
REPORTING TOOLS: Moving to cloud technology can greatly reduce the burden of IT maintenance and operations. Nevertheless, there still must be cloud-based reporting tools and workflows to ensure smooth operations and help guarantee that agencies are making the right mission-critical decisions.
DATA MANAGEMENT: The new face of the cloud requires a new class of tools for data management. Tools for archiving, classifying and analyzing data are now standard
when considering the cloud as a massive source of both structured and unstructured data.
CLOUD SERVICES: Selecting the right cloud services provider with the right portfolio
of services can make or break a cloud migration effort. A true enterprise-grade provider can help agencies ensure that they will accelerate and streamline their migration to the cloud, while taking better steps to ensure success. A cloud service provider must be able to scale to meet variable needs for storage, security, and data and application management.
SECURITY AND COMPLIANCE: Moving application and data workloads to the cloud helps reduce cost and increase flexibility and scalability, but security and compliance concerns must be addressed. Security remains a constant concern for the cloud, and all government agencies are subject to varying levels of compliance. Toolsets to ensure security, encryption and compliance must be part of the picture.
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