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Eight tips to help you get started
- Weigh the impact to your IT organization before adopting IaaS, because you are still responsible for software patches, maintenance, and upgrades. Monitoring and managing applications in a provider’s data center, in addition to those you host yourself, can become a burden to staff.
- Create a strong internal team to manage your security and compliance requirements together with a chosen cloud provider.
- Make sure you have a thorough understanding of how your current system works before you outsource any of it to the cloud. You need to know what you’re getting.
- Look for service providers who can meet your redundancy needs for connectivity or storage so that you never lose needed services.
- Negotiate service-level agreements (SLAs) to help ensure you get the level of security and identity management required by your organization.
- Understand that on-demand is not all-or-nothing, and take advantage of pay-per-use pricing in the near term for some of the applications you run in a data center. Use existing, dedicated capacity for baseline resources while you assess the impact on your IT staff.
- Look at the access methods for an IaaS offering, and see if existing standards are used. Common protocols include eXtensible Markup Language (XML), Representative State Transfer (REST), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), and File Transfer Protocol (FTP).
- Plan an exit strategy. If you choose to change providers, make sure you know how to get applications from the cloud.2
Vocabulary
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Virtual infrastructures
Providers of cloud computing services use virtualization to provide the elasticity so often cited as a benefit. Virtualization means to create virtual machines out of physical servers—that is, multiple operating environments within one physical environment. That way, you can squeeze the maximum computing capacity out of your existing resources. Virtualization technology is useful for any IT group interested in cost-effective data consolidation apart from cloud computing. Just be aware that virtual machines need to be managed and maintained, whether they reside on a service provider’s infrastructure or in your own data center.
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On-demand compliance
Even with federal mandates that embrace cloud computing, you must compare IaaS offerings carefully. You should have a well-functioning compliance program for identities, data, and devices before adopting cloud services. Then, ask prospective service providers whether they can meet your needs for transparency, compliance controls, certifications, and auditability.
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IaaS can help agencies with:
- Hosting public-facing citizen services and websites.
- Storage—especially of public data. The public cloud might even be a safer place to store data than your own data center, according to a team of engineers and computer scientists at the University of California.2 However, data classification is a key requirement for evaluating risk and making informed decisions about the use of cloud computing.
- Testing large-scale applications in a discrete environment before deployment in the field.
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| Entering the cloud
Get the basic information that agencies need to consider for cloud computing. |
| Government benefits in the cloud
Learn how agencies can benefit from moving into the cloud. |
| Security in the cloud
Explore security issues around cloud computing and ways to avert them. |
| SaaS
Deliver applications and services to users—regardless of their location—with Software as a Service (SaaS). |
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| PaaS
Benefit from a cloud operating environment where you don’t have to manage the infrastructure, with Platform as a Service (PaaS). |
| IaaS
Rent data center capacity as needed, rather than owning and running hardware, with Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). |
| Private cloud
Discover if a private cloud—with dedicated resources, additional control, and customization—is right for you. |
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