By Kyle Keller, Cloud Business Director, EMC Federal
I don’t think it comes as any shock that Federal IT is at a crossroads – straining to keep up with budget cuts, substantial data growth, and user demands. With high expectations for application development and deployment, users are forced to go outside of traditional IT versus working with their centralized IT function – causing significant inefficiencies government-wide.
It’s time for an IT shift – away from a manual IT-centric delivery model (fitting services into a one-size-fits-all box), to an IT-as-a-Service model (identifying enterprise needs and modeling IT to meet them). More and more, I am seeing this shift powered by the promise of the Software-Defined Enterprise.
More than half of Feds have already started to switch to software-defined IT services, such as data center management, storage, and networking, according to a MeriTalk study, “Innovation Inspiration: Can Software Save IT?”
Why are Feds making the shift? According to their survey responses, they are looking to maximize agility and establish the opportunity to innovate delivery of services to citizens.
- 77% say their agency needs a more flexible IT framework
- 66% believe transitioning to a software-defined enterprise will foster IT innovation in their agency
- 53% say shifting will reduce costs
- 41% believe it will improve performance
Here at EMC, we’re taking a look at those needs to empower agencies to meet their goals. As an example of the opportunities software-defined is presenting, EMC’s ViPR Software-Defined Storage is a lightweight, software-only solution that transforms storage into a simple, extensible, and open platform, providing a single platform to centralize and automate storage management and delivery across mixed storage types and vendors.
This technology pools and virtualizes storage resources, automates storage provisioning, and delivers storage-as-a-service, ultimately lowering operating expenses by reducing time-consuming, manual administrative storage tasks.
Feds have made their objectives clear – and Software-Defined Enterprise promises to get them there. With automated processes, increased flexibility, and enhanced value extraction, Feds can free up resources to pave the way for innovation. It’s time for IT to re-define its storage standards.
I’m looking forward to seeing where agencies go with this technology. What results are you seeing with the move to software-defined?
