Page 31 - FCW, November/December 2019

“Oracle provides the most complete hybrid cloud.
It can operate in all those environments seamlessly.”
– Tony Cossa, former CTO for USDA, now director of product management, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
needed to implement the OCI solution at federal agencies, as well as state and local government organizations. The U.S. Air Force was the sponsoring agency for OCI’s authority to operate application.
Oracle Fusion Cloud (SaaS) also has received FedRAMP Moderate and DoD IL4 PATO for federal civilian agencies, defense department agencies, as well as for state and local government.
“Advanced security and compliance features, including a comprehensive approach at a granular level, allows civilian and defense agencies to manage their cloud environments based on
their internal principles of security,” Cossa says, adding that Oracle provides capabilities for customers to configure security based on risk tolerance.
Decades of experience have taught Oracle that technology is only as good as its interface with users. Heeding that truism, Oracle created in OCI the most user-friendly product it has ever developed. OCI’s user experience is “easy, simple, fast and secure,” making it easier for workers to focus on their agencies’ missions, notes Ritchhart.
Return on investment
The total cost of implementing and running OCI compares favorably to other options, Oracle says. Creating a database with backup capabilities could take a day using traditional methods. With database-as-a-service, you can complete the task, including multiple add-on features, in 20 minutes.
“The key thing for agencies is the high return on investment in terms of minimizing the amount of labor required,” Ritchhart says.
There is also the high cost of
downtime – higher for defense agencies in the field. “The military is in the position of operating in austere areas where unexpected events can take away part of your network,” Ritchhart says. “We provide capabilities so you can operate even if the network is down.”
OCI is a game changer, in part, because it closes functional gaps between legacy and cloud, between on-prem and off and between data originating in various systems developed by disparate vendors,
the company says. “OCI allows our customers to function both in their own on-premise databases and data centers as well as other places, like AWS or Microsoft or Google,” Cossa says. “Oracle provides the most complete hybrid cloud. It can operate in all those environments seamlessly.”
Platform stability
In the federal sector, platform stability is a key differentiator because most government agencies can’t afford to be down for any length of time without compromising mission integrity, Cossa says.
In addition to platform stability, Oracle’s long-term relationship with government agencies means that the company is in tune with government culture and has “familiarity with the mission and the capabilities required to make agencies successful,” says Ritchhart, who worked in the federal government for 45 years before moving to the private sector. “We clearly have the breadth of mission understanding that is tied into the products and the support that we provide customers. Folks count on Oracle to always be there. That means
a lot to government agencies.”
As data moves from the periphery of the enterprise to the core function
of networks and agencies’ missions, Oracle’s expertise positions it to lead the transition. Data is in its DNA, Ritchhart says. “Oracle is better suited than anybody in terms of bringing together all those different stove pipes, integrating those things together and then being able to create the analytics that go with using new tools,” he says.
The ability to integrate capabilities and data into an enterprise is a powerful tool. Its developers hold that OCI will make it “extremely simple” for users to “take advantage of the wealth of data they have.”
Leveraging the Oracle Cloud solutions will enable customers
to integrate customer and mission capabilities while positioning
them to gain extensive visibility
into data that will allow them to visualize information to build inputs into decisions and trends while innovating their services. And by automating as many functions as possible, government can reduce the cost of overhead, maintenance and manpower.
The upshot?
“Focus more on mission, less on the technology,” Cossa says.
For more information visit: www.oracle.com/fedramp