How to Modernize IT Without Leaving Legacy Behind
Government agencies are under increasing pressure to move to more agile development and operational methodologies. But what does this mean for existing legacy environments? Actually, agile development and operational methodologies can be achieved in legacy environments. The answer to this problem is rooted in IT automation, which serves three purposes:
- Make more efficient use of existing resources – people, processes, and technology
- Prepare your agency for a migration to the cloud
- Help drive adoption of agile methodologies
One of the big challenges facing government agencies today is the need to use updated cloud technologies whenever possible, per The Cloud First policy. This policy mandates that agencies take full advantage of cloud computing benefits to maximize capacity utilization and minimize cost. An underlying issue that comes with the implementation of cloud technologies is that Government agencies need to find a standardized way of fielding capabilities that don’t work that well in cloud.
Justin Nemmers, Director at Ansible Government, explains that there are still a lot of good things about legacy environments that agencies don’t need to lose. “Legacy doesn’t always mean something is old, it just means a solution has been developed and maintained in a non-agile, more traditional way,” Nemmers says.
So how do you take all of these existing people and processes from legacy systems and fit them into a new cloud methodology? “What solutions like Ansible bring to the table for these government organizations is that it allows them to find ways to more effectively leverage the things they’re already doing, and in a more dynamic and repeatable manner,” Nemmers explains.
Ansible aims to make information more available to the people in the organization that have a need to access those specific resources. “For example, how does a development team get access to a new server they will be developing code on, and how can they be sure it’s identical to what a production system will look like? Ansible solves that problem,” says Nemmers.
Regardless of where you are in your modernization effort, IT automation can help.
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