Page 32 - GCN, Oct/Nov 2017

CLOUD & INFRASTRUCTURE
and training systems and materials for people in the field — in one place on Amazon Web Services’ GovCloud infrastructure.
Rather than simply migrating data and architecture from an old system to a cloud environment, CNIC N9 chose to completely redesign.
“Typically, companies do a lift and shift, taking their existing infrastruc- ture and moving it into a cloud envi- ronment,” Pratt said. “At that point, the cloud just becomes another hosting facility. And while that’s effective and
a good initial foray into the cloud, it doesn’t derive the real benefit of it.”
The fact that Navy service members are constantly moving from base to base made it difficult to implement a standardized process, said Julia Cal- laway, the Navy’s point person for the CNIC N9 effort. But since shifting to a cloud environment, CNIC’s web-based programs that support Navy service members and their families with a wide range of issues — including child care, food, shelter and entertain- ment — have been more popular and responsive to their needs.
“It started out as a way to standard- ize and modernize all of our market- ing departments for our operations,” which included 107 websites and more than 90 mobile applications, Callaway added. But now “it’s the heartbeat of our work here.”
The Fleet and Family Readiness web- site now boasts 2.5 million monthly page views.
Finalist
on a departmentwide move to the cloud-based Microsoft 365 platform, IT leaders knew they first needed to gain a better understanding of the existing infrastructure.
To ensure that DOT’s network could handle the increased demands a cloud-based productivity suite would bring, then-CIO Richard McKinney, now-acting CIO Kristen Baldwin and their team set about taking a full inventory. Working with Secunetics and Riverbed Technology, the Office of the CIO scanned all known devices on the network — roughly 800 in all — to identify performance and security problems.
Along the way, the team discovered some 200 shadow IT devices, many of them consumer-grade switches and routers that were not receiving secu- rity patches and were not compliant with central management standards.
Armed for the first time with an accurate picture of the network, DOT officials moved quickly to remove the unauthorized equipment, replace it with enterprise-grade devices when needed, and ensure that all devices were being monitored and main- tained. The newly hardened network not only addressed the security risks and latency problems that could have crippled the Microsoft 365 rollout,
but also laid the foundation for future cloud migrations and other IT modern- ization efforts for years to come.
Finalist
ity through traditional methods or services.
TDM, DSL and satellite weren’t cutting it, but “we didn’t really have a lot of options,” said John Holmes, enterprise service network operation manager at Interior. Then he and his team found one: a managed broad- band network based on satellite technology.
“Now we can get any service that’s available, not just satellite,” Holmes said. “In a lot of places, we can get the equivalent of [Verizon] FiOS service or fiber-optic service. We can get 4G and LTE service. Satellite is obviously an option.”
What’s more, Level 3 Communica- tions and Hughes Network Systems, which provided the technology, handle all the aggregation and create a secure enclave that they bring back into the department’s network.
“It’s never in the wild, and we never have to worry about being compro- mised,” Holmes said. “It’s a security wrapper around basically an open- source network.”
Now remote Interior offices can do things they couldn’t before, such as distance learning and live feeds. Plus, the department is saving money — a lot of it. For a typical fiber connection, it was paying upwards of $1,100 per month. Now it costs $261.23. Also, the department can deal with local provid- ers rather than just the big carriers. Holmes said smaller companies tend to have lower upfront costs, making installation cheaper.
“Demands for bandwidth are grow- ing,” said Tony Bardo, assistant vice president for government solutions at Hughes. “They’re never going to shrink — never. The budgets are what they are. How do you solve that problem? You have to go off the grid...techno- logically from what has been tradition- ally offered to the federal agencies and do what John’s done.”
Cord-cutting for the
Cleaning house on the
enterprise
way to the cloud
Hybrid Networks for Remote Offices
Department of the Interior
With many of its 2,400 connected sites and offices in the United States and its territories situated in remote locations such as the bottom of the Grand Can- yon or in Alaska’s Denali National Park and Preserve, the Interior Department was struggling to maintain connectiv-
DOT Network Modernization
Department of Transportation
The Transportation Department is a sprawling confederation of agencies with more than 100 field sites across the country and nearly as many orga- nizational silos. So when DOT decided
32 GCN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017 • GCN.COM