Government agencies have historically had to work with limited resources while trying to provide the best possible services to constituents and the cloud is key to success. However, agencies began to experience some of the drawbacks of cloud – including unexpected costs and lack of flexibility in service – which diminished the power of this transformative technology. Recently, there has been an expansion of cloud services that use a flexible and scalable growth model, which can be tailored to an agency’s consumption needs without adding to technical or fiscal debt.
When evaluating a new technology solution, government agencies must first assess that it facilitates security, simplicity, scale, sustainment, and speed. In a recent issue of On the Frontlines magazine, Nick Psaki, Principal Technologist at Pure Storage, discussed how the adoption of flexible and scalable cloud computing can enable these five fundamental elements of government technology.
“Modern data service platforms built on flash offer transformational capability across all of these factors… [and allows] organizations to focus on improving application performance and user productivity,” Psaki said. “This enables capacity for the future and improves sustainment by dramatically increasing reliability while also driving down technical debt, operational cost, and technical complexity.”
Read the Secure Cloud in Government Magazine
Since cloud computing leverages cloud data storage, agencies don’t have to invest in expensive in-house infrastructure. Today’s cloud computing programs are designed to be flexible and scalable to meet an agency’s specific needs. Agencies only pay for the compute power that they consume, and they can scale the processing capacity up or down as their needs change, without having to add to their in-house systems.
In a recent webinar, Psaki explained how this flexible and scalable growth model is beneficial for the future innovation of government. “Our company mission has always been to empower innovators to build a better world with data… the really fun part about this is we actually won’t make the systems physically any bigger or consume any more electricity,” Psaki said. “It’ll be a really dramatic increase in performance, capacity, scalability, and a tremendous improvement in power efficiency at the same time.”
As a result of the pandemic, most agencies have shifted to hybrid work environments. Agencies can leverage cloud computing services to further support this new workforce by providing them ample processing power and secure data access in remote locations. Because cloud computing uses cloud storage to support it’s deployment capabilities agencies get the “benefits of hosted infrastructure, with the security of on-premise control and responsiveness.”
“Industry has responded [to government transformation efforts] by providing cloud-like acquisition and consumption models for on-premise deployment of equipment and services,” Psaki said. “This provides the best of all worlds to a government agency: addressing the needs of the 5 S’s, while also addressing the needs for direct control of the infrastructure, applications, and sovereignty over the data, and at the same time providing the flexibility, scaling, and sustainment benefits of the cloud.”
As government agencies continue their digital transformation journeys, technology that can scale or modify as their needs change will only become more important. Cloud computing services support government agencies with the compute and storage capabilities they need to drive innovation and growth.
Learn how to leverage flexible and scalable cloud services to enable innovation here.