4 reasons it's time to reassess your cloud architecture

Many agency IT leaders shifted their cloud strategies before the start of COVID-19. Then, during the pandemic, IT teams rapidly migrated key workloads to public cloud to support new requirements, including mass work-from-home, recognizing that speed was more important than “best” or “cheapest.”

The pandemic added a sense of urgency that forced many agencies to stand up services quickly. An unintended consequence, however, is that many of these efforts didn’t take a thoughtful, strategic approach. Instead, workloads were migrated without a comprehensive assessment to determine which apps or workloads were suitable to public cloud.

While public cloud promises cost-efficiencies and ease of management, that isn’t the case for all workloads, which can result in skyrocketing data egress costs, poor performance and security or compliance complications. 

Below are four key reasons why it’s time for agencies to reassess their current cloud architectures and guiding questions to help them chart a hybrid “cloud by design” approach. 

Four reasons to reassess agency cloud architecture

Cloud isn’t a “place” nor is it a particular brand. That’s why it’s important for government IT leaders to pause and assess where they are in their hybrid cloud journeys and address any ongoing issues including:

1. Escalating costs: Early on, cloud promised to save organizations huge amounts of money, helping them move IT from a capital expense to an operating expense. But in many cases, underlying cloud costs have quickly exceeded initial expectations, often due to data egress that IT teams may not even be aware of.

2. Availability and performance: For essential public-sector services, outages are simply not an option. But most public clouds don’t offer the same service-level agreements for uptime as those for on-premises solutions. Availability can also depend on how much organizations are willing to pay to guarantee uptime.

3. Security and compliance: Many agencies deal with highly sensitive data, and their workloads’ compliance policies and regulatory frameworks may not be compatible with public cloud. Improved security was the top reason (tied with performance) why organizations are moving from a public cloud to a private cloud or non-cloud environment, according to IDC.

4. Lack of skillsets: Agencies need in-house IT staff trained on best practices for managing cloud environments, whether public, private or hybrid, and the integrations between those environments. They also need visibility to properly monitor usage and costs. Any skills gaps in these areas can cause serious security and performance issues.

Questions to shape a cloud by design approach

Public cloud is a “one size fits most” solution—and it’s not necessarily cheaper over the long run than an on-prem solution. A core component of a cloud by design approach involves app rationalization, which can help IT teams better understand each workload as well as the interdependencies between workloads. 

Some compute is better suited for certain clouds or certain cost/risk tolerances. It's incumbent on IT teams to consider the usage characteristics, seasonality and data access patterns of the workload, as well as preferred consumption model. They should also consider the impact of latency and the volume of data on workload performance.

Once an agency reassesses its cloud architecture, it may find data and application discovery imperfect, so IT teams must account for additional project steps and time. Here are some essential questions to ask when assessing each workload:

• Is it technically possible and cost effective to lift and shift?
• What is the timeline and cost for rearchitecting or rebuilding?
• What application dependencies exist? 
• How mission-critical are the apps? 
• Are there any apps that are redundant?
• Is there a commercial as-a-service product available? 
• What risks are associated with various options?
• Do applications require special hardware to run efficiently? 
• Does the agency need more predictable costs to ensure it doesn’t exceed its cloud budget?
• Is better performance at the edge required? 
• Is data escrow and transportability necessary (to minimize data egress charges)?

Navigating cloud complexity 

Complexity continues to increase as many organizations (76%) are using two or more public clouds, according to 451 Research. Using multiple public clouds can help agencies benefit from best-of-breed capabilities or handle integration challenges. But this approach adds additional layers of complexity to already complex IT environments, as organizations increasingly rely on a mix of on-prem systems, private clouds, multiple public clouds and legacy platforms.

Instead of forging ahead with public cloud, it’s time for agencies to pause and assess their current cloud ecosystems, consider the four reasons, focus on app workloads and rationalization. From there, they can develop overarching plans to modernize, implement proper governance and execute on a true cloud by design approach.

Larry Frazier is chief strategy officer at Iron Bow Technologies.