Federal agencies are using multiple public clouds in addition to on-premises private and non-cloud infrastructures. This mutli-cloud adoption is creating increasingly complex environments and making it difficult to manage and protect data. Without proper data management, hybrid and multi-cloud environments can quickly become just another series of expensive and risky silos. All cloud migration strategies should encompass data management best practices to maximize cloud adoption benefits while minimizing risk.

Cloud services are accelerating agility and collaboration and generating cost-efficiencies for government agencies. But as the public sector takes more and more advantage of the cloud, it’s important not to forget the data. In SaaS environments, agencies own the security of that data and need to access it appropriately. When using IaaS or PaaS, government is also responsible for the security of those workloads and the correct configuration of the underlying application and infrastructure components.

The service-to-the-citizen movement is adding oomph to federal agencies’ adoption of cloud computing. And vice versa.

Choice and self-determination are cornerstones of our nation’s democratic process. Come election night, we might not all root for the same candidates, but there’s one point we can all rally around – the need for modernization and the role of the cloud in powering U.S. elections.

The Obama and Trump administrations may not have a lot in common. But encouraging federal agencies to move their computing workloads to cloud services providers has been a definite point of policy continuity.

Recall that during the Obama years, cloud and a fresh data center consolidation initiative roughly coincided. (I say “fresh” because of presidential findings that the government has too many computers dated at least to the Reagan administration).

Cloud adoption among government agencies is reaching an inflection point. Driven by the cloud’s cost-efficiencies and ability to offer an improved citizen experience, faster delivery of mission capabilities, agile development, and scale applications up and down, much of the initial reticence about cloud models is dissipating.

Another day, another government ransomware victim. On March 22^nd, 2018, the city of Atlanta found itself locked out of computers across government offices and facing a ransom demand of $51,000 or $6,800 per computer, GCN reported.

Ransomware tops today’s list of security concerns for governments, and no agency is immune. Just look at the statistics:

• Cook County, Chicago was a victim of last year’s WannaCry ransomware attack.
• St. Louis Public Library was hit with ransomware, demanding $35,000 in Bitcoin.
• Bingham County, Idaho paid out #3,000 in ransomware to restore its servers.

Just about every type of existing application is currently being migrated or considered for migration to a cloud infrastructure. While priorities vary from agency to agency based on mission priorities and/or application development and re-platform priorities – the pattern is clear. And, with the passing of the Modernizing Government Technology Act (MGLA) into law in December 2017, the funds to spur agency migration to the cloud are there.

Are you thinking of moving your databases to the cloud? Perhaps, you’re thinking about transitioning to database-as-a-service (DBaaS)? But what’s involved? What hurdles must be overcome and how do you chart a path to cloud migration of your most sensitive workloads?

Why Move Databases to the Cloud?

Migrating to the cloud offers several benefits to public sector database administrators (DBAs).