Page 12 - FCW, August 2021

Maximizing the Benefits of Multi-Cloud
Building best-of-breed
CLOUD ENVIRONMENTS
To make the most of the technology, agencies must become more strategic about developing, monitoring and evolving their multi-cloud ecosystems
THE GOVERNMENT’S APPROACH TO CLOUD TECHNOLOGY has changed dramatically in the years between the 2010 Federal Cloud Computing Strategy, known as Cloud First, and the 2019 Cloud Smart Strategy. The first policy pushed agencies to consider cloud technologies before others, while the second offers actionable advice on how to deploy the technology.
Today, 81% of federal agencies use more than one cloud platform, according to a MeriTalk survey. In addition to mixing on-premises systems with private and public clouds, agencies also use products and services from a variety of vendors to create multi-cloud environments. Such environments were born of necessity because there is no single, one-size-fits-
all cloud solution. Instead, agencies can choose best-of-breed products in each area to meet their specific needs.
Because of its inherent flexibility and scalability, cloud technology played a key role in agencies’ response to the pandemic
and their ability to shift employees to remote work. Now government leaders recognize that multi-cloud environments are crucial for ensuring resiliency during a crisis.
The Cloud Smart Strategy explicitly references hybrid and multi-cloud environments as essential tools for improving mission outcomes and service delivery. “Cloud Smart operates on the principle that agencies should be equipped to evaluate their options based on their service and mission needs, technical requirements, and existing policy limitations,” the strategy states.
Agencies across government are heeding the call. Last year, the CIA awarded its Commercial Cloud Enterprise contract
to five cloud service providers that will compete for task orders from across the intelligence community. In addition, the Defense Department recently announced that it was canceling the $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, which would have been awarded to a
single cloud provider, and replacing it with the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability, a multi-vendor indefinite-delivery, indefinite- quantity contract.
Acting DOD CIO John Sherman cited
a variety of reasons for the change in direction, including the evolution of DOD’s cloud ecosystem and the need for DOD to leverage multiple cloud environments to execute its mission.
Tackling the challenges of multi-cloud
Despite the benefits of multi-cloud environments, they can present management challenges for many agencies. For instance, it can be difficult to migrate mission-
critical legacy apps to the cloud, ensure the interoperability of products and services from multiple vendors, enforce security policies across systems, or even have visibility into all aspects of a multi-cloud ecosystem.
In a recent survey of FCW readers, 55% of respondents said their agencies have comprehensive strategies for multi-cloud
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