Meeting Agency Goals through Cloud Modernization

U.S. Government agencies are required to consolidate and modernize their IT infrastructures by taking advantage of technological innovation, including cloud computing. The current administration has prioritized cloud modernization, with Executive Order 14028 outlining the necessary steps to enhance national cybersecurity. These include adopting the best security practices, moving toward Zero Trust Architecture, accelerating the process of securing cloud services, centralizing and streamlining access to cybersecurity data to identify and manage risks, and investing in technology and personnel that align with these modernization goals. 

As agencies seek to optimize financial, programmatic and personnel resources, adopting new computing strategies is challenging given the long-standing reliance on expensive legacy systems that still meet daily mission requirements. Updating IT architectures can be compounded by a shortage of skilled technologists and security professionals to manage these transitions. Despite these hurdles, most agencies have adopted hosted computing into their environments during the last decade. The Federal Cloud Computing Strategy was introduced in 2011 and updated to Cloud Smart in 2019. The rubric for measuring the adoption of Cloud Smart is the new Cloud Computing category in the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) scorecard. Based on the scores, there’s room for agencies to create flexible, secure and resilient operating environments.

As cloud computing options and opportunities have evolved, agency experts have asked one fundamental question: How can I leverage cloud-based solutions to meet mission and operational goals?

The answer to this simple question is not one-size-fits-all. An effective cloud-based implementation depends on several factors. Every agency relies on various IT and security architectures, applications and legacy systems implemented for specific mission support. Many agencies struggle to recruit and retain IT talent to support their current operations, let alone new hosted environments. Each organization has IT modernization priorities based on its current and future mandates, evolving cybersecurity concerns and dynamic personnel and financial resources.

There are often considerations to cloud adoption, especially with staff who may not recognize the significant expense of maintaining traditional data center operations. In addition, those focused on the security of agency data, networks, and systems may have reservations about their ability to detect, monitor and respond to potential cyberattacks with cloud-based resources.   

Fortunately, comprehensive and secure cloud-based services, authorized by the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) are available to help agencies accelerate their cloud modernization efforts. Splunk understands how FedRAMP is important to US government agencies because it provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services. It empowers agencies to use modern cloud technologies with an emphasis on security and protecting federal information while reducing duplicative security assessment efforts, inconsistencies and cost inefficiencies.

Why Expand Cloud-Based Operations?

One compelling driver for expanding cloud computing across an agency’s IT portfolio is the undeniable flexibility, agility and scalability that hosted environments afford. Cloud-based storage, computing and applications allow organizations to respond quickly to new mandates and missions through readily-available cloud resources. 

Further, as agencies adopt cloud strategies to accomplish their missions, they immediately benefit from access to purpose-built tools designed to leverage hosted data, applications and services. Through integrated cloud implementations, on-premise or otherwise, public sector organizations can gain insight and value from their information resources, adapt to changing mission requirements and avoid capital-intensive infrastructure investment and management.

What About Reliable Legacy Systems?

Most agencies use on-premise and self-managed IT environments initially designed to meet specific organizational and essential mission needs. Over time, these may be replaced by more cost-effective or flexible new technologies; however, adopting cloud computing to modernize selected applications does not require abandoning functional installed infrastructure.

Federal IT and security professionals can benefit from traditional and modernized enterprise architecture components using a hybrid, multi-platform approach. Many agencies adopt this approach to leverage preferred existing capabilities while gradually rolling out cloud-based and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications to tackle new requirements and replace resource-intensive legacy systems. 

How to Launch a Successful Cloud Transformation?

Given the real-world constraints on agency budgets and staffing, expanded cloud computing presents an increasingly appealing way for agencies to modernize operations while continuing to meet their mission needs. Splunk offers comprehensive solutions and services designed to assist federal practitioners in navigating the cloud modernization journey with ease and confidence. 

Splunk recognizes that these transitions require time and effort to create a future-proof, modernized IT infrastructure, often reflecting a hybrid and multi-cloud approach. As a trusted partner to agencies governmentwide, Splunk is ready to assist each agency with its ongoing efforts to maximize IT investments, mitigate risk, and deliver benefits from evolving technologies that align with priority agency objectives. 

Splunk’s strategic Professional Services team can partner with key agency personnel to start the process, from creating a roadmap for targeted cloud adoption to identifying the most appropriate cloud services and data management solutions to meet an organization’s current and future requirements.