Page 41 - FCW, March/April 2021

Agency Spotlight DISA
Modernizing App Security and Data Delivery
to Support the Warfighter
Federal agencies, including Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), face a complex task in modernizing their data management.
Planning for multi-year periods into the future, while at the same time accommodating federal budget realities that demand shorter-term innovation is where agencies can look to industry for guidance. That’s why Gary Hix, Chief Technology Officer at Hitachi Vantara Federal, says one focus is on improving app modernization, delivering next generation
storage, and working to roll those capabilities out to the cloud in support of the warfighter.
“We can plan over five to six years, but most federal agencies, even large service-delivery organizations like DISA don’t always have control over how much money they have from year-to-year,” Hix said. “DISA and the DOD usually get their fair share, but not all their projects get priority every year.”
Hix says his team can craft programs and services to improve data access and consolidation. Hitachi Vantara Federal has already had success with its file, sync and share technology, which offers users the ability to access and collaborate on files from anywhere intheworld.Dataconsolidation, said Hix, will create some important economies of scale and improve service delivery even more.
Eliminating redundancy
Organizations without a holistic data strategy will end up creating numerous copies of the same data across multiple systems. Hix says in the past, organizations would have their applications, servers, and storage run by dedicated systems administrators all in a local data center. It was expensive and inefficient. He says Hitachi Vantara Federal can help consolidate the data so users can access the data from a centralized location.
“All of that data and infrastructure now gets centralized and run over cloud technologies,” Hix says. “So we can securely share data and provide mobility. They don’t have to be logged into their own specific data center. They can access it from anywhere--whether it is stateside, in Europe or the Middle East--and do it securely, which has become
a big focus for DOD. If they are in the middle of the desert, they don’t want to be dragging a large server around, they want to know they can access the data and know it’s secure.”
There’s also another advantage toacentralizeddatastore:Instead of just archiving data – the approach many organizations take – users can then grab that consolidated dataandrundataanalyticsonit.
They can also opt to archive data if it is not used very often.
“In many ways it’s back to the future,” Hix says. “Several years ago with mainframes, computing was all very consolidated. As client servers were incorporated into the data fabric, computing systems spread out, but now with the cloud we’re coming back to central processing and central management. Agencies can look to industry leaders, like Hitachi Vantara Federal, to help with app modernization and the move
to cloud, whether it’s public or private.”
While it may take some time before optimum data consolidation is achieved, Hix says it’s well within reach over the next couple of years to modernize and consolidate
data storage in their environment. Development of new applications leveraging newer cloud friendly APIs are important to modernize warfighter data access using feature rich cloud-based systems.
“Industry can help agencies of any size modernize and take the steps they need to deploy the latest cloud-basedtechnologies,”Hix says. “What we’re all focused on is getting mobile data into the hands of warfighters when and where theyneedit.”
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