Page 18 - FCW, September/October 2020

IT MODERNIZATION
The right approach to secure cloud
migration
Agencies can streamline modernization by embracing cloud-native solutions and a unified security approach
Pritesh Parekh
Chief Trust and Security Officer, Virtustream
in part because their IT teams may lack
the necessary cloud skill sets. Migrating, managing and securing workloads in the cloud require specific expertise that differs significantly from a data center. To resolve this skills gap, agencies should consider
the advantages of cloud-based managed services, which can significantly accelerate the benefits of cloud and help unify security programs.
Cloud partnerships built
on the tenets of trust
Cloud technology is essential to IT modernization because it enables agencies
SEVERAL YEARS AGO,
discussions with agencies tended to
revolve around convincing skeptics to move to the cloud. Those discussions evolved over time as IT leaders grew to understand the clear value of adopting cloud. Not only can it be a more secure, elastic and scalable approach to managing workloads, but it is also integral to IT modernization goals.
Cloud provides the flexibility agencies need to manage workloads and adopt
the latest innovative technologies while controlling costs. The challenge is to avoid taking a lift-and-shift approach. Existing business systems and applications were historically built to run on-premises. As
a result, simply moving them to the cloud does not fully translate into cloud benefits. Likewise, the tools and techniques used
to manage on-premises workloads cannot simply extend into the cloud either.
Taking an on-premises approach
and repurposing it for cloud creates unnecessary complexity and expense, ultimately undermining the benefits of running workloads in the cloud. In order to realize true cloud success, you must couple cloud migration with IT modernization, thus taking advantage of all that cloud technology has to offer.
Unifying security across hybrid environments
Agencies understandably want to ensure they can offer users the same services
and performance in the cloud that they currently have on-premises. However, by implementing cloud-native solutions, agencies can exceed these expectations
rather than only meet them. The goal is to give users secure, seamless access to all the tools and data they need via the cloud.
In the interim, agencies will have to operate in a hybrid environment with some workloads still running in on-premises data centers until they can be transitioned more completely to cloud. Having different programs for managing and securing workloads in a data center versus the
cloud can be challenging. Therefore, agencies should look for opportunities to unify their approach to security across all environments.
This can be a hurdle for some agencies,
S-18 SPONSORED CONTENT
By Boo-Tique/Shutterstock/FCW Staff