Going Hybrid

By Rebecca Carroll

Maybe you suspect your agency could be saving money by making better use of the cloud, but what about all

the data and functions that simply can’t go virtual? If they’re holding you back, don’t let them. Go hybrid.

Under the hybrid cloud model, you move as much as possible to a commercially run public cloud that works like a utility—you pay only for the space and computing power you actually use—and integrate that with the rest of the information technology systems you host locally, run from virtual servers or have in a government cloud.

“The evidence is now clear that the hybrid cloud model will be the dominant approach to large enterprise, like the federal government,” Peter M. Cuviello, lead client partner for Deloitte Consulting LLP, recently told Nextgov.

Many federal agencies are already operating under a hybrid cloud model. Here are some challenges and tips.

Figure out what you have so you can determine what to put in the cloud.Your agency has probably been collecting data and small-scale, local IT systems for years now, but you may not have been organizing and tracking it all in the most logical manner simply because the best practices weren’t clear. So now you have to figure out what you have. This is the first step to determining what can reside in the cloud.

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Agencies can boost savings by integrating commercial cloud services with in-house systems.

“Define what things belong in an enterprise solution—what are common things, and what are uniques?” Bill McNally, assistant administrator for procurement at NASA, said at a recent conference.

At NASA, “every center will say ‘I’m unique. I’m different. Just give me money and leave me alone.’ Sorry,” he said. “It’s a matter of defining what should be enterprise, what should be unique, and then what’s the best solution.”

Sounds easy enough, but this is the biggest challenge for many agencies, according to Brian Houston, vice president of engineering at Hitachi Data Systems Federal.

“A major concern that you’re seeing in the government space is understanding what they have, what kind of data really needs to be in-house or the internal cloud versus what can go out to public entities,” he says. “Should those PDF files or Word documents or even just databases that have been out there for years collecting a ton of data—do they really need to be in high-performance storage? And the answer is usually no.”

It takes some pondering. But cloud providers and integrators are eager to help agencies sort their holdings.

Security. Giving up a certain kind of control. Trust. In many cases, cloud computing can actually provide better security than in-house setups. Deloitte’s Cuviello, formerly the Army’s chief information officer, couldn’t name a federal agency that was doing a great job of adapt-ing to the cloud, but he applauded the intelligence com-munity for being out front—an answer, perhaps, to those concerned about security.

The CIA’s $600 million contract with Amazon Web Services stirred up many conversations and debates, according to Douglas Wolfe, CIO at the agency, which is as concerned as any about cyber. “I think that we’re going to end up in a very good quality product, and a very secure product,” Wolfe said in a recent Washington Post report.

According to Cuviello, the real problem may be letting go. “The feeling is: If I don’t own it and I don’t run it, I don’t trust it,” he said.

“If I have the server under my desk, I’m really sure that it’s working because if it breaks, I’m going to fix it. So I have control,” Cuviello said. “The cloud is all about trust. You trust that your data in the cloud is being taken care of, is safe.”

Culture. Taking a broad view. Cloud computing doesn’t promise capabilities you’ve never had before. At this point, it allows you to do the same things you’ve been doing, but cheaper—and in some cases more reliably and more securely, but mostly just cheaper.

According to Lawrence Gross, deputy CIO at the Interior Department, it requires a broad perspective. “You have to understand the requirements of others within the enterprise that may have similar requirements if you really want to leverage and get the best bang for the government’s dollar,” he said at a recent event. “We’ve pretty much changed the mind-set in the department of how you go about buying IT, but we really have to continue to push and push to work on the organizational culture and work on the organizational maturity so we can get to the point where we understand that we are in fact one enterprise.”

Angelos Kottas, director of product marketing for hybrid cloud services at VMware, agrees.

“If the decision-making doesn’t necessarily take responsibility for all the outcomes, you end up having local decision-making that may or may not be the best decision for an agency,” he says. “Absolutely we’ve seen both in public sector and in private sector that with local decision-making . . . the decision is being based on something other than the overall objective—which might be agility, it might be performance, it might be security, as well as budget.”

YOUR AGENCY HAS PROBABLY BEEN COLLECTING DATA AND SMALL-SCALE, LOCAL IT SYSTEMS FOR YEARS NOW, BUT YOU MAY NOT HAVE BEEN ORGANIZING AND TRACKING IT ALL IN THE MOST LOGICAL MANNER.

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