Page 29 - FCW, May/June 2018

THE POWER OF
PaaS
As agencies seek to modernize, can platforms strike a better balance between standardization and productivity?
BY TROY K. SCHNEIDER
In the federal government’s multiyear march to the cloud, plat- form as a service has often been something of the mushy middle. The early emphasis on data center consolidation made infrastructure as a service an obvious starting point, while tools ranging from Slack to ArcGIS to Office 365 helped agencies appreciate the potential of software as a service.
But with PaaS, which provides a complete development and deployment environment on top of cloud infrastructure, the value proposition is more complicated.
Part of the problem is that PaaS appeals to the IT professional. Avoiding the hassle of buying and managing software licenses and middleware and providing a platform for the complete web appli- cation life cycle are no small accomplishments, but the immediate value to mission owners or top agency leaders is not easy to convey.
Now, however, the growing emphasis on shared services and rethinking business processes is putting PaaS in the spotlight. As Matt Lira, special assistant to the president for innovation policy, told FCW, the goal is not simply to craft one-off solutions, but “to institutionalize the change capacity for the long term.”
Platforms, when used properly, can provide that balance between mission-driven productivity and scalable standardization.
For Francisco Salguero, a deputy CIO at the Agriculture Depart- ment, it all comes down to empowering users. “Whether you’re doing click-to-code from the development perspective or letting the end user produce new and fancy reports, they don’t necessar- ily need to go to IT or the back office” to get what they need, he said at a May 17 event hosted by FCW.
Todd Schroeder, vice president of government digital strategy at
PaaS
at a glance
Hosted applications
SaaS
Development tools,
database management, PaaS
business analytics
Operating systems
Servers and storage
IaaS
Networking firewalls/security
Data center physical plant/building
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