Only 53 percent of IT leaders said their agency uses hybrid cloud with a “well-established” strategy, according to a joint MeriTalk and Hitachi Vantara Federal survey released earlier this year.
Of the 150 decisionmakers surveyed between March and April, 91 percent cited operational challenges — data compatibility and downtime issues, in particular — with hindering strategic hybrid cloud adoption.
While 99 percent of respondents said their agency used hybrid cloud for data storage and operations to some degree, 43 percent said their strategy needed improvement and 3 percent that they were in the early stages of adoption. As these agencies wait to modernize their IT infrastructure, the volumes of data they oversee continue to skyrocket, and their technology needs continue to evolve.
Many agencies can’t afford further delays migrating to hybrid cloud and software-defined storage for the scalability, resiliency and compatibility with emerging technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence they provide.
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What’s in a Hybrid Cloud Strategy?
Successful cloud migrations aren’t assured. A misconfiguration can lead to application downtime or worse, introduce cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
That’s why many agencies turn to trusted partners with multicloud experience to design cost-effective, secure, seamless migrations in a matter of months. CDW helps agencies optimize their cloud environment based on their unique mission needs.
For starters, we ensure virtual machines use only the CPU power, memory and storage they need, before migrating any apps to the cloud, and size the environment for the resources required to keep costs manageable.
Secondly, we include app dependency and migration planning in every hybrid cloud strategy to eliminate performance issues. This involves working with agencies’ IT teams and app owners to map apps and VMs that are codependent and move them to the cloud together. We verify these apps continue to work properly every step of the way for each migration wave.
CDW also configures scalable network connections between on-premises data centers and the cloud and offers to design security architectures that protect traffic and public cloud instances for agencies — using native and third-party tools such as virtual firewalls from Barracuda or Palo Alto Networks.
Lastly, CDW trains IT teams in the skills needed to manage their new hybrid cloud environments and relevant tools.
Hybrid Cloud’s Benefits Speak for Themselves
The Hitachi survey found 62 percent of federal IT leaders worried about their data infrastructure’s future scalability. Respondents’ top priorities were upgrading that infrastructure, investing in advanced analytics tools and enhancing cybersecurity — all of which hybrid cloud supports.
What’s more, hybrid cloud allows agencies to better forecast and plan for the future.
UP NEXT: Here’s how to launch an advanced analytics pilot.
The proof is in the pudding with hybrid cloud. IT leaders whose agencies made the jump reported streamlined collaboration and data sharing (54 percent), better informed decision making (53 percent), improved citizen service delivery (48 percent), optimized resource use (48 percent), and faster threat identification (47 percent).
Yes, there are significant hurdles to actual migration, but agencies can start strategizing today — and CDW is there to help.
