Some government agencies aren’t maximizing their hybrid cloud architecture because they’re operating two separate environments instead of leveraging the power of a unified strategy.
A hybrid cloud is a mixed computing environment that combines private data center infrastructure with public cloud services, allowing data and applications to be shared between them. It offers extreme flexibility by enabling seamless operation in a location that best aligns with business objectives. A consumption-based cost model can more tightly align IT expenditures to business transaction volumes and provide increased flexibility between capital and operational budgets.
Here are three strategies to ensure agencies can maximize their investments and reap the full benefits of hybrid cloud.
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1. Consider Business Requirements to Better Implement Hybrid Cloud
If an agency seeks to maximize the benefits of a true hybrid cloud infrastructure, it must first consider its business and financial requirements. To have a hybrid cloud strategy that is financially optimized and operationally effective, officials need to define their desired goals up front. If an agency doesn’t have a sound strategy based on business outcomes, it will most likely waste its cloud spend. But a solid hybrid cloud foundation may achieve instant scalability and financial alignment for a government organization.
2. Upskill Government Staff to Benefit Your Environment
Maximizing the return on a government’s investment in hybrid cloud requires upskilling existing staff. Cloud and on-premises skill sets differ, and it’s important to bridge this gap by offering training opportunities.
Some agencies have made the mistake of taking this transformation too lightly by blindly jumping on the cloud bandwagon without any prior planning or training strategy. A comprehensive training plan to upskill staff can help a state or local agency thrive in a multicloud environment.
3. Automate On- And Off-Premises Workloads For Better Results
If officials want to maximize the benefits of a true hybrid cloud infrastructure, they should consider automating on-premises workloads as a first step. Running a hybrid cloud effectively requires the adoption of patterns and practices consistent across whatever platform aptly suits the application and workload, whether that be on-premises, in a public cloud or across multiple clouds. In practice, this means aligning operations, personnel, organizations and processes to common frameworks and automation principles.
UP NEXT: Learn about three key threats to cloud cost management.
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