Federal IT modernization is often a many-headed creature. Expert technologists must determine the requirements for an IT refresh. Administrators use their years of experience to plan within budget cycles. Leadership approval must be sought, and officials must be apprised of progress.
At its most basic level, however, federal IT modernization initiatives focus on two elements: applications and infrastructure. Applications perform specific tasks, and infrastructure provides the foundation for managing those resources.
A recent white paper from CDW Government, “How a Modernized IT Environment Supports Digital Government,” notes that legacy systems can hobble digital transformation, which poses obstacles to modernizing the citizen experience for government systems. The white paper’s authors advise “targeted investments in new systems and applications” along with an assessment of IT infrastructure. They also encourage modernization over maintenance as an avenue for embracing innovation, noting that agencies first must enact infrastructure modernization to empower application modernization.
Often, infrastructure and application modernization require the right mix of cloud migration. Cloud can be a great equalizer in meeting demands while also addressing the foundational elements of modernization.
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IT Improvements Start with Cloud Migration
The digital government white paper suggests specific areas for assessment when determining IT requirements: networking, processing, storage and security. Agencies can often improve their networking, storage and compute power — as well as security — through cloud migration.
CDW can help agencies determine the best way forward with cloud migration, in part with the assurance of SkyMap, a cloud migration acceleration tool. With the assistance of commodity resources and specialized cloud architect insights, SkyMap can help agencies migrate resources quickly and affordably. “SkyMap plans specific, easy migrations from legacy infrastructure, identifying optimal cloud strategies, optimizing workload placement and eliminating inefficiencies associated with traditional data centers,” says CDW’s Asim Iqbal.
In another white paper, “IT Infrastructure Modernization Increases Agility and Efficiency,” CDW experts state that all organizations can benefit from an “optimal combination of cloud and on-premises resources.” Infrastructure modernization increases efficiency and productivity, they add: “For example, microservices and containers permit more nimble, automated workloads.”
So, infrastructure modernization not only prepares agencies to scale resources on demand but also positions them to capitalize on emerging technologies.
An Application Assessment Helps Reduce Duplication
In the CDW white paper “Accelerating Velocity Through Legacy Application Modernization,” the authors observe that app modernization can produce benefits such as “better performance, less risk and new forms of value.”
The digital government white paper identifies “a massive amount of duplication across different applications.” But applications running in coordination with one another can call on microservices and containerization as engines for those functions instead of operating in a silo.
These engineering capabilities are just one advantage of cloud-native applications. Examining cloud-native options may be the best path forward in an application rationalization. An application assessment can determine the right steps for reducing duplication among applications and driving these efficiencies, which can lead to improved citizen services.
Application modernization should result in improved business velocity (an often neglected metric for agencies) and operational optimization — and again, cloud is often the answer.
DISCOVER: Cloud security posture management helps agencies going multicloud.
Combine SkyMAP and SAMA to Unlock Cost Savings
CDW’s Strategic Application Modernization Assessment can help government administrators determine where to begin with their application rationalization efforts. As Iqbal notes, “SAMA helps federal agencies analyze existing legacy code automatically to highlight barriers to modernization, providing specific targeting and guidance for problematic code segments.”
This automated assessment can serve as the first step in creating a roadmap for improvement. It will point the way to infrastructure requirements and application obstacles, opening all stakeholders’ eyes to the extent of the challenges ahead.
SkyMAP and SAMA together can unlock greater reliability, reduce costs, increase scalability and strengthen security. With the right guidance, these results can please everyone, from the tech experts and the budget experts to elected officials.
