What Solutions and Services Can Best Support Federal IT Modernization?
Federal agencies face daunting pressure from every direction. Citizens want better services; congressional overseers demand efficiency; and agency executives expect secure, optimized operations.
A number of cutting-edge technologies have emerged to help provide government agencies the capabilities they need to meet the demands of IT modernization. These tools range from end-user devices to modern networking hardware to resources in the public cloud. Here are some of the solutions and services that can be particularly useful for government agencies undergoing IT modernization.
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Cloud Solutions and Hybrid IT Gives Feds Flexibility
While the public cloud has a number of benefits to offer around scalability and flexibility, many organizations have made the mistake of underestimating the challenge of making a successful cloud migration. Moving resources to the cloud is not a simple matter of “lifting and shifting.”
Rather, organizations must map out their application dependencies, determine which applications and data are a good fit for the public cloud (or are even allowed to be stored and run with public cloud providers, depending on regulations) and compare prices and service-level agreements among different providers. Help may also be required to build out private clouds, migrate and test applications, and forge connections between private and public cloud environments.
New Data Center Technologies Let Agencies Gain Efficiencies
Depending on when on-premises IT infrastructure was last refreshed, government agencies may find that they have an array of new options available to them with regard to data center resources, due both to improvements in technology and drops in prices.
Flash storage, for example, may have previously been out of reach for an agency, but falling costs may make it a good fit for use cases in which high availability of data is a top priority. Other data center technologies that may come into play during an agency’s IT modernization effort include next-generation networking, high-performance computing and software-defined solutions. Hyperconverged infrastructure is a popular choice for organizations adopting a hybrid cloud model.
Data Analytics and Business Intelligence Offer Insights
Advanced analytics solutions are becoming more accessible even to organizations with budget constraints, leading government agencies to experiment with the use of data analytics and business intelligence for tasks such as law enforcement, public health and the optimization of physical assets such as buildings and vehicles.
Consulting services can help agencies without internal data analytics expertise take advantage of this emerging area and improve their services.
Enterprise Mobility Management Secures Mobile Devices
While government agencies have generally been slower than organizations in other industries to adopt mobility, mobile solutions are now often a central part of the way employees at many agencies work. Many agencies are looking to get away from owning devices internally, leading some to adopt BYOD programs, while others look to Device as a Service offerings to equip users with the latest mobile technologies.
Enterprise mobility management solutions are a key component of any mobility plan, especially for agencies whose employees handle sensitive or regulated data.
Security Solutions Make Agencies Award of Vulnerabilities
Too often, organizations do not find out that their security solutions are inadequate until their networks have already been breached. Security assessments from a trusted partner can help identify gaps in agencies’ security strategies before they are exploited by cyberattackers. Assessments can include penetration testing, in which solution experts launch harmless “attacks” against an agency’s network to find vulnerabilities, as well as policy and procedure assessments designed to ensure that organizations are appropriately complying with security standards.
In addition to investments in IT infrastructure, government agencies often rely on a trusted third-party service provider that can offer knowledgeable, unbiased advice.
To learn how federal agencies can address their IT modernization challenges, read the CDW white paper “How IT Modernization Improves Government.”
