The Federal Government Wants to Cloud Smart(er)

The U.S. government just issued a request for comment on its plan for cloud computing adoption across the federal government. The government says it’s time to move from Cloud First to Cloud Smart.

According to an article on NextGov.com,

“The new strategy will update the Obama administration’s “Cloud First” policy, established in 2010, to better reflect where agencies and the technology are today. Seven years ago “was a time when cloud computing was still new,” Federal Chief Information Officer Suzette Kent said during a roundtable with reporters Monday. “Many agencies were early in their journey in adopting those technologies and we’ve learned a substantial amount within the federal government, as well as the capabilities in the industry, which have significantly advanced.”

At NETSCOUT, we agree, and we’re flattered. Why? For much of the past year, we have been engaging our customers in a conversation about how we can help them Cloud Smarter.

In the private sector, where slow is the new off, delivering uninterrupted, secure, high-performance services that delight end-users before, during, and after migration of workloads to the public Cloud is often the difference between success and failure. Historically, although the desire for new digital services and modernization in the public sector has been high, the adoption has lagged behind for a number of reasons. Thus, we’re very encouraged by this new focus. Ongoing success will require government teams to keep a few things top of mind.

For starters, the vast interdependencies across the entire service stack, including applications, networks, compute, service enablers and databases, along with the introduction of new technologies, could stress IT beyond the breaking point.

Once a service is deemed better suited for the Cloud, agencies will need to gain insight into existing service performance and security issues quickly – before, during and after migration. With the right level of visibility, and a modern framework that NETSCOUT provides, this can and should be done with confidence. The end result is not only the cost savings of Cloud deployment, but also the security of information and people and the more efficient and effective delivery of mission serving solutions.