Many agency CIOs are changing their cloud strategy ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, during the pandemic, IT teams realized that speed was more important than "better" or "cheaper" and quickly moved their core workloads to the public cloud to meet new demands, including work massive from home.
The pandemic has added a sense of urgency that has forced many institutions to rise quickly. However, the unintended consequence is that many of these efforts lack a thoughtful and strategic approach. Instead, workloads are migrated without a thorough assessment to determine which applications or workloads are suitable for the public cloud.
While public clouds promise convenience and ease of management, this is not the case for all workloads, which can lead to increased data access costs, poor performance, and security or compliance issues.
Below are four key reasons why it's time for agencies to revisit the guiding questions to help evolve their existing cloud architecture and hybrid cloud design approaches.
Four reasons to rethink your agency's cloud architecture
The cloud is not a specific "country" or brand. That's why it's important for government IT leaders to stop and assess where they are on their journey to a hybrid cloud and address any ongoing challenges, including:
1. Increased costs: Initially, the cloud promised to save organizations huge amounts of money by helping them shift from IT to operational costs. But in many cases, underlying cloud costs quickly exceed initial expectations, often due to data breaches that IT isn't even aware of.
2. Availability and Performance. Interruption of essential public services is unacceptable. But most public clouds don't offer the same uptime SLA as on-premises solutions. Availability may also depend on how much an organization is willing to pay for uptime guarantees.
3. Security and Compliance. Many agencies deal with highly sensitive data and their workload compliance policies and regulatory frameworks may not be compatible with the public cloud. According to IDC, increased security is the number one reason (related to performance) for organizations to move from public clouds to private clouds or non-cloud environments.
4. Lack of skills. Agencies need IT staff trained in best practices to manage and integrate cloud environments, whether public, private or hybrid. They also need visibility to properly track usage and costs. Lack of skills in this area can lead to serious security and performance problems.
Cloud modeling questions with a design approach
A public cloud is an all-in-one solution that isn't necessarily cheaper than an on-premises solution in the long run. A key component of a cloud-based design approach is application rationalization, which can help IT teams better understand each workload and the interdependencies between workloads.
Some calculations are better suited for certain clouds or certain cost/risk tolerances. The IT team must consider usage patterns, seasonality, workload data access patterns, and preferred consumption patterns. They must also consider the impact of latency and data volume on workload performance.
After an agency reviews its cloud architecture, it may find that data and application discovery is imperfect, requiring IT teams to consider additional project steps and time. Here are some key questions to ask yourself when evaluating any workload:
- Is it technically and economically possible to set up and move?
- What are the conditions and costs of reconstruction or redevelopment?
- What are application dependencies?
- How important is the app?
- Are there additional programs?
- Are commercial products available as a service?
- What are the risks associated with the different choices?
- Does the application require special hardware to run effectively?
- Do agencies need more predictable costs to bypass their cloud budgets?
- Are there any higher performance requirements out there?
- Is data storage and data transport necessary (to minimize data access costs)?
Navigate the complexity of the cloud
451 According to the research, complexity continues to increase as many organizations (76%) use two or more public clouds. Leveraging multiple public clouds can help agencies leverage best-in-class features or overcome integration challenges. However, this approach adds complexity to an already complex IT environment, as organizations increasingly rely on a mix of internal systems, private clouds, multiple public clouds and legacy platforms.
Instead of jumping ahead with the public cloud, it's time for agencies to stop and evaluate their existing cloud ecosystem, look at four reasons, focus on application workloads, and keep things simple. From there, they can develop a comprehensive modernization plan, implement good governance, and operate in the true cloud with a project-based approach.
Larry Fraser is director of strategy at Iron Bow Technologies.
