Leading practices in moving to the cloud for civilian agencies

Government and public sector organizations need more resources to accomplish complex missions. While many have made notable progress in adopting cloud technologies, there are a variety of practices that could help agencies capitalize on the cloud faster.

In a recent FedScoop panel discussion, IBM Partner Kevin Aylward highlights examples of best practices and where and how those practices made a meaningful difference to agencies attempting to migrate into the cloud.

“Several agencies have taken the approach of building platform capabilities that embrace the open architectures that both AWS and IBM support and become a de facto platform for building new cloud-scale applications on, so that is one pattern we see quite a bit of,” he says.

Hiram Perez, senior partner development manager at AWS, also joined the discussion to share recommendations for ensuring success when taking on a transformation project such as cloud migrations.

“Make sure that you inform yourself before doing any major transformation. These are large and can be very complex. So, before you decide on something you want to do, take time to understand the information. And what I like to suggest to the agencies is to use the RFI process. I think it’s a great ability that agencies have to use [RFI] to find out exactly what’s going on out there—ask industry, ask companies on best processes,” Perez says,

Perez and Aylward also talk about, despite sometimes being viewed as competitors, AWS and IBM are working together to help government organizations advance their missions.

Listen to the complete panel discussion to learn about the most significant opportunities for government agencies to leverage the cloud even further.

You can also hear more from other government leaders about driving cloud-first strategies in the public sector.

This video panel discussion was produced by Scoop News Group and FedScoop and underwritten by AWS.