Page 46 - FCW, November, December 2018

Q&A: CLOUD MIGRATION
Agencies find virtualization smooths cloud migrations
The first step is to choose which assets to transition.
Interview with Troy Massey Director, Enterprise Engagements, Iron Bow Technologies
Most federal agencies, by now, have some cloud presence. Still, questions
persist. When should an organization shift to cloud? What’s the best way to make the transition? How do you minimize missteps?
We recently put those questions to Troy Massey, director of enterprise engagements for IronBow Technologies, a leading IT solutions provider serving federal agencies. Massey and his team help organizations get to the cloud. The key is to develop and implement a solution that works for each organization’s unique needs.
Q: Moving into the Cloud Smart era, how does a government agency know when the time is right to undertake a cloud migration?
A: It’s definitely different with every customer, but traditionally the ones who are leaning towards cloud are the ones who are looking at a major hardware or software upgrade. They’re looking to take that leap into the cloud instead of investing in a systems upgrade. By rule, DoD and federal have to look to cloud first with any initiative they do.
Q: Multi-cloud or hybrid cloud? How do you sort it all out?
A: There’s on-premise cloud, hybrid cloud, off-premise cloud, public cloud, private cloud. Multi-cloud really is a siloing or segmentation. You can have an on-prem cloud that runs certain applications, and then you can have a completely segregated off-prem public cloud that runs different applications. That would be the multi-cloud situation. You can also have some apps running on AWS and some running on Azure. That’s also multi-cloud.
Hybrid cloud is a link between clouds, traditionally a hybrid cloud would be on-prem and a public cloud with something linking them
together. Iron Bow’s approach
is based on VMWare Cloud Foundation’s SDDC Manager, which links the on-prem cloud to the public cloud. It allows you to do things like workload migration. Management between the two becomes like a stretch network in the old days.
Q: What are the main benefits of a multi-cloud solution?
A: First, it’s the ease of management. You can do everything as a service, so
you don’t have to manage the application layer. You pay monthly and avoid major hardware investments every few years.
If you’re on a public cloud,
the provider foots the bill for upgrades. You pay by the drink, so to speak.
There’s also more flexibility in the mobile environment. Remote access is a lot more user-friendly and a lot more secure through a public cloud provider.
Q: What can agencies do to enhance the ease, speed and efficiency of going to cloud, including stand-up time, application provisioning, and total cost of ownership? In other words, can they expect a soft landing?
A: The most critical piece is the assessment. A lot of applications
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