Lessons Learned from Large Scale Multi Cloud Transformations in the Government

Background

Ever since our founding, Samtek has been a trusted partner to the Federal Government in performing large scale Multi-Cloud Transformations. We have learned many lessons along the way, that maybe applied both within Government and Commercial environments.

Challenges & Lessons Learned

1. Workforce Enablement. As the stewards of the Cloud Transformation initiative, the government must invest in up-skilling all relevant (business and technical) staff to comprehend both the business and technical aspects of the Cloud and how they differ from on-premises environments. Samtek conducted several “Workforce Resilience” trainings for Federal Government Agencies, training staff on the Cloud Operating Model and demonstrating how their daily routines were evolving due to these migrations. This initiative was highly successful, well-received, and had a discernible positive impact on the enterprise transformation. 
2. Mitigate inherent risks with Multi Cloud Strategy. While it offers flexibility and resilience a multi cloud strategy introduces several strategic, operational, security and financial risks. It is very important to have a clear plan for CSP selection, consistent governance / security enforcement, CSP discount maximization and dealing with vendor lock-in/ workload portability issues.
3. Agency level acquisition strategy: Very often we see that while the infrastructure support contracts are all geared towards Cloud Modernization, application development and especially legacy application maintenance contract criteria is not updated to emphasize Cloud expertise. In our experience this results in having contractors not suited for an accelerated cloud migration and causes avoidable delays. 
4. Overemphasis on Lift-and-Shift: Driven by aggressive contract timelines or infrastructure decommissioning goals, some agencies overemphasize “lift and shift” migrations to the cloud, without optimizing for the cloud. This leads to underutilization of platform benefits, higher operating costs and operational inefficiencies. 
5. Tool Sprawl and Lack of Standardization: Especially in a multi cloud environment, it is very likely that different application teams will select different tools for the same function (CI/CD, monitoring, scanning etc.), this creates interoperability issues and operational overhead. Establish a governance process via the Cloud Center of Excellence or equivalent to approve an enterprise toolset for common cloud functions and enforce adoption via shared modules, training and service blueprints very early in the Cloud Transformation process. 
6. Cross Contractor Coordination: A federated delivery model, as is common in most government agencies, is prone to disconnects between contracts/contractors. Samtek has been repeatedly recognized by government agencies as being the most collaborative contractor in the ecosystem, proudly demonstrating the “badgeless” approach personified under the “One Agency One Team” slogan. Apart from partnering with the right teams that embody such a value system, our recommendation is to implement a shared delivery model from the onset. Organize regular inter-contractor forums, joint backlog planning where possible, and integrated reporting. It is also useful to align contractor incentives (like CPARs) to common KPIs that align with the agency objectives.