Digital Transformation in the US Public Sector – Think Intuitive

Today’s federal IT shops face a growing need to serve users and constituents, one that can be hard to stay ahead of. The amount of data to gather, process, and consume is overwhelming, and increases each day.

Agencies have to modernize the infrastructure to support and secure data in order to stay ahead of the ongoing demand for government services in real time.

All the while, IT managers have more and more choices at their disposal, thanks to the availability of regulated software as a service (SaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offerings, along with automation and orchestration solutions in the marketplace.

IT leaders have many technology choices.

These capabilities can now truly accelerate the delivery of mission-critical services and offload much of the burden on operations. Further, they complement existing in-house services, helping IT managers to balance their use of technology across the spectrum of private and public offerings and therefore serve employees and constituents effectively and efficiently today and well into the future.

The transition from rigid, monolithic applications to agile, distributed, and scalable services is well underway. Cisco was patient as this market transition progressed, yet persistent in its focus on the network – the true underpinning of digital transformation. The network is the lifeblood of service delivery; it is the nervous system of the secure, intelligent platform that enables digital transformation.

Cisco accelerated its innovation engine over the last several years in anticipation of this profound change, recently introducing the intuitive network – its strategic direction toward a network that constantly learns, adapts, and protects itself and the systems it supports.

This new network turns intent into policy and automates that policy across all systems. It is powered by context; the network analyzes the intelligence within, to provide insights into users, devices, applications, and threats. It then abstracts purpose from interactions on the system, providing assurance of the intent of those interactions.

The network is the lifeblood of service delivery; it is the nervous system of the secure, intelligent platform that enables digital transformation.

The intuitive network extends across the entire infrastructure and into the application environment by way of its Application Centric Infrastructure. The strength of ACI forms the basis for capturing intelligence and applying analytics.

Cisco recognizes that the immense value in the network must be unleashed through analytics in real time – and it has built such a capability organically with Tetration Analytics and via acquisition with AppDynamics. However, as analytics gains prominence in everyday IT system deployment and operations, the ability to rapidly deploy systems and automate services becomes paramount. Cisco provides several key solutions in this regard:

As the sole provider of a fully integrated, hyperconverged infrastructure system, HyperFlex, Cisco recently announced its intent to acquire SpringPath, its exclusive HCI technology partner. HyperFlex combines software-defined networking with computing and storage via its Unified Computing System and the HX Data Platform, enabling the rapid deployment and simplified operations needed for today’s fast IT.

Through its acquisition of CliQr a year ago, now known as Cisco Cloud Center, Cisco provides the on- and off-premise services orchestration needed to manage workloads across multiple physical instances.

Cisco Workload Optimization Manager actively manages workload resources across physical and virtual systems, dynamically scaling and allocating compute and storage capacity without manual intervention.

Each of these solutions interfaces into Cisco UCS Director, an infrastructure management system that allows standard or customized interfaces to deliver maximum flexibility across heterogeneous application environments.

Public sector organizations, as they continue to extend their services footprint beyond premise-based systems, must consider how IT services will be orchestrated, delivered, and consumed, locally and remotely. The myriad of offerings for workload automation and orchestration, performance management, and security can be overwhelming.

What is lacking in the marketplace is a distinct framework for these capabilities, into which each can seamlessly integrate. Most organizations will find that framework right at home and primed to support the ongoing migration to integrated on- and off-premise services.

Cisco’s intuitive network, analytics, orchestration, and optimization solutions provide such a framework that will enable public sector IT for years to come.