Kristie Grinnell, global chief information officer and vice president for supply chain at General Dynamics’ (NYSE: GD) information technology business, told FedScoop in an interview published Friday about the importance of a hybrid cloud environment to government agencies and how it could help them further their mission.
“Hybrid environments are important to our government agencies, because the cloud is not one-size-fits-all. Depending on your data requirements, your security requirements, where your end-user is coming from as they access whatever workloads you’re putting into the cloud, and the interoperability you need with your other systems, agencies need to be able to choose the right [mixture of] environments for the cloud, or for the job,” Grinnell said.
Agencies looking to support their missions through cloud adoption should consider the “type of data and how and who can access the data” and ensure the security of the cloud environment. Grinnell called on agencies to consider putting up an enterprise architecture.
“An enterprise architecture — a secure, standardized way of getting to whichever hybrid cloud environment you want — allows you to build on the speed of the cloud,” she added.
Grinnell said agencies planning to move to the cloud should understand the needs of customers and “match them up to the right cloud experience” and establish the organizational change framework needed to facilitate cloud migration.
She also cited the importance of partnering with a contractor that could help agencies understand the capabilities of each cloud service provider, establish the process and tech standards and ensure cloud security.
