Page 18 - GCN, March/April 2016

TRANSITION 2016: NEXT-GEN CLOUD TOOLS
HOW TO MAKE “AS A SERVICE” A REALITY
The flexibility of the hybrid cloud eases an agency’s transition to an IT “as-a-service” business model.
SPONSORED CONTENT
WILLIAM ROWAN
THERE ARE two factors fueling the federal government’s drive to acquire capabilities through an as-a-service model. One factor is the reduced funding agencies are receiving from Congress. The other is the growing amount of funding legacy systems take up in maintenance and training.
Buying new capabilities as a service helps agencies make budget-conscious moves that reduce dependence on legacy systems more
are also now starting to move to an off-premises model. Private clouds help agencies maintain control and visibility of critical applications, while public clouds provide capacity and scalable services on-demand.
The next step, both in terms of evolution and capability, is the convergence of those models into a hybrid model. This provides agencies with the ability to bridge on-premises to off- premises. With a hybrid cloud model, agencies can increase service levels while driving down costs and improving security.
A hybrid model helps agencies move applications and workload back and forth as needed. It also provides more flexibility for differing business models. As agencies compare this new way of delivering services to the way they’ve traditionally operated, the hybrid cloud environment will continue to evolve.
Applications have historically been moved to the cloud, but now new solutions will be built with the understanding they’ll run on a cloud infrastructure. There will be more focus placed on defining the needs and desires relative to the application. This is the big shift that will be evident over the coming years.
This shift includes not just assessing an application from the perspective of “will it run,” but also defining the procedures and processes by which the clients will consume this service. This could entail creating some type of charge-back or show-back model so agencies can accurately show who is using
the services and the actual costs of delivered services. By presenting a business case in this way, agencies can be more productive and focus on the applications they need to achieve their mission, without having to worry about the supporting IT infrastructure.
William Rowan is the Vice President Federal for VMware.
VICE PRESIDENT FEDERAL,
VMWARE quickly. The cloud is certainly the catalyst in
this transition to the as-a-service model. Although the cloud has been around for a num-
ber of years, federal agencies still regard it with a degree of skepticism. Security remains the primary objection. The Office of Management and Budget’s Cloud First policy is likely to push any holdouts to the cloud as the current administration prepares for the January 2017 transition to a new one by closing out its initiatives like Cloud First.
Fortunately, the path to as-a-service and cloud-first isn’t new. There are success stories and lessons learned throughout federal agencies. The vendor community that supports them does as well. As agencies innovate by buying as a service, VMware sees a couple of different shifts in the marketplace. Here are
a few things government leaders should look for and consider when making decisions about cloud and as a service.
Surely infrastructure as a service—the ability to get that compute and storage capability as
a service—has become the most popular. It’s probably the simplest for government to tackle. Then there will be more software as a service, and then platform as a service, as agencies focus on how to design and build that next-generation application as a cloud service for their own use.
A significant number of agencies have already built their own private or on-premises clouds as they embrace an as-a-service model to support their organizations. Those agencies
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