How Cloud Solutions Can Lead to Stronger, More Secure IT Operations

By Mike Wiseman, Vice President, Public Sector, Pure Storage

In fiscal year 2022, the federal government spent a total of $12.3 billion on cloud goods and services – a 30 percent increase from a year before. Cloud services, which offer tools such as networks, servers, and data storage, can help federal agencies deliver better IT services while minimizing costs. But, without adequate security measures, these services can expose agencies to cyberattacks.

The Government Accountability Office recently released a report on how agencies can improve their cloud security practices – including replacing aging IT systems, consolidating varying platforms, and utilizing cloud to improve how they store and manage federal data.

By focusing on these areas for IT improvement, agencies can ensure more effective and efficient services for citizens and employees.

Replacing Aging IT Systems

Government agencies are under immense pressure to deliver on their missions regardless of today’s increasingly challenging cyber environment. Agency IT systems are experiencing more strain than ever, and events such as changing federal regulations and the looming threat of a ransomware attack, often require new tools and data storage and management solutions to support and protect mission-critical functions.

To address the impact of aging legacy systems, agencies must focus on implementing the proper IT modernization systems and migrate to modern, interoperable IT infrastructures. As IT leaders make these shifts, they should seek technology solutions that best meet the needs of their agencies and stakeholders. With many different solutions on the market, those that offer agile and flexible consumption models are the most efficient and cost-effective as they allow agencies to scale up or down without massive disruptions.

Consolidating Operations

Agencies often operate with a lean staff and need solutions that maximize productivity without compromising cost and security. Federal IT leaders continue to look for the best ways to equip employees with the right tools and technologies, but staffing issues persist, further deterring the push toward modernization. Agencies should look to solutions that require less maintenance and can free up staff for other mission-driving activities, along with continuing education and professional development.

One of the important ways IT teams can be more efficient in developing and delivering applications in private and hybrid cloud environments is by consolidating a larger number of applications on fewer storage systems. The ability to do this type of application consolidation and unlock its many benefits means less management and maintenance with a faster return on investment.

By consolidating applications into a cloud-centric platform, agencies can reduce costs, lower risk, and support a more integrated and interoperable infrastructure.

Investing in Cloud Services

With the pace of digital transformation, governments must streamline and accelerate technologies to deploy integrated cloud, hybrid, and multicloud architectures and upgrade the legacy applications that they rely on.

As technologies continue to evolve, agencies must ensure that they implement the most advanced IT systems, including container-based applications, as they provide agencies with a complete data storage infrastructure solution capable of delivering premier citizen services. Container applications give IT development teams the tools to modernize their applications, as they can gain speed, agility, and scale, while offering easy backup and restore and enhanced disaster recovery.  This protects the entire application, including data, application configuration, and container-based objects.

Government IT leaders aiming to modernize with Kubernetes, containers, and microservices must keep one point in mind: the storage equation has changed. Kubernetes platforms give government IT development teams the tools to modernize their applications, using containers and microservices to gain speed, agility, and scale.

Investing in right-sized efficient storage systems and applications, containers can help agencies elevate citizen service capabilities while addressing the critical areas of cyber protection, legacy modernization, and cloud services. A clear cloud strategy is essential to unlocking critical insights and advancing agency missions.

Secure, Collaborative Solutions

Agency missions never stop; they need secure, efficient, sustainable, and agile solutions that can keep pace. IT leaders should focus on executing a comprehensive strategy for implementing modern solutions that will continue to serve citizens’ changing needs.

In addition, agency IT leaders can partner with private-sector corporations to modernize their IT infrastructures. Working collaboratively, the government can make strides in adopting modern practices. By creating an individualized path to modernization, agencies can better deliver services to citizens in more specialized ways and continue to grow in their service capabilities.

Agencies should not treat IT strategies as static plans. Instead, they must revisit their strategies on an ongoing basis as they move toward modernization. Modern and secure systems can lead to enhanced platforms and applications, which leads to more substantial business process improvement.

About the Author

Michael Wiseman is the Vice President, Public Sector at Pure Storage, bringing over 25 years of experience as a tech sales leader in government IT. He is responsible for developing a team to enable the transformation of how public sector customers protect, serve, and educate their constituents by leveraging technology to connect, innovate and lead. Mike can be reached mwiseman@purestorage.com and at our company website https://www.purestorage.com.