Key Takeaways from Amazon Web Services’ Public Sector Summit

DLT Solutions sponsored last month’s 3^rd Annual Amazon Web Services (AWS) Public Sector Summit, where I saw firsthand that Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) are gaining acceptance and increasing traction as the Public Sector migrates workloads to the cloud.

The five main takeaways I took from the event are:

1. AWS announced that more than 300 Public Sector entities and 1,500 educational institutions currently utilize their solutions. This high growth in the public sector is not unexpected because state and local governments are reducing expenditures by migrating workloads to cloud services. We expect an even greater rate of growth as Public Sector Enterprises continue to look at innovations coming from the Commercial IT Enterprise market.
2. Migrating Big Data and High Performance Computing workloads to AWS addresses Public Sector Challenges in an agile, yet cost-effective manner. This has happened because the pricing model has changed.  IT requirements can now be met without a huge upfront cost. Cloud computing now uses the same pricing models as a typical utility (electric, gas, phone, etc).  Utility computing pricing model shifts the burden from Capital Expenditure to Operational Expenditure. Also similar to public utilities, there is a need for regulatory oversight.  AWS is working closer with Public Sector Enterprises closer than ever to ensure their solutions match strict regulatory requirements.
3. The Cloud as an Enabler for Business Transformation, presented by Deloitte.  IT Departments have been (perhaps unfairly) seen as an impediment to business innovation.  This viewpoint is partially due to program-level requirements for providing innovation to their user communities.  The programs need a certain level of agility and flexibility.  The Cloud is seen as a means of rapid delivery of services.  This does not mean that the IT function is going to disappear.  We see IT becoming more aligned with Programs Offices.  In essence, business requirements will drive the migration to the Cloud.  Today’s Systems Analysts will eventual transition to something more along the lines of Business Analysts.  So, the vast years of institutional knowledge remains in-house, whilst gains in innovation and agility help programs rapidly deploy services.  It’s a Win-Win.
4. Disaster Recovery (DR) with the AWS Cloud.  The Cloud should be one part of an agency’s DR.  Agencies should still perform all the requisite processes that comprise a disaster recovery program, including risk analysis, failover tests, and business impact assessments. We feel that Public Sector Agencies should avoid Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) as their sole DR solution.
5. Many new services and features were announced in the AWS GovCloud Region.  Those include:
   EC2 Cluster Compute, Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, Simple Notification Service (SNS), Simple Queuing Service (SQS), and CloudWatch.The availability of these services is a great addition to the GovCloud portfolio, as it reiterates AWS’ commitment to the Public Sector Cloud Community.  One of DLT Cloud Advisory Group’s mandates is to provide educational outreach to the Public Sector Cloud Community.  We applaud the new services’ announcement.

DLT CAG was on hand to answer questions and provide free FedRAMP whitepapers and books. If you were not able to attend, but want a free eBook explaining the basics of cloud computing, click here to receive Cloud Computing for Govies today!

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