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Utilizing Compute Resources will be the Key to 2023 Success

By Hector Collazo, Chief Technology Officer, Sev1Tech

As we‘ve seen throughout 2022, organizations have prioritized modernization and migration to the cloud. This trend will not slow down in 2023 - Gartner estimates that by 2025, as much as half of spending across application software, infrastructure software, business process services and system infrastructure markets will have shifted to the cloud.

With increased cloud migration, we can expect to see the increased use of Compute Resources to support cloud's implementation and maintenance. As more organizations, including federal agencies, recognize the growing complexities of cloud, they will need to utilize more Compute Resources. This cycle - of increasing cloud and Compute Resources - will be a growing challenge for federal agencies in 2023 and it will be imperative that agencies take steps to effectively manage, analyze, and leverage their Compute Resources for success.

Managing: Utilizing cost tracking

One of the most significant challenges federal agencies will face is Compute Resources cost tracking - especially if they are taking a multi-cloud approach. For government, budgets are often tight, and funding needs to be allocated to ensure mission success with limited waste. As such, agencies should develop a lifecycle management plan to ensure they are gaining cost efficiencies and taking advantage of cloud service providers' (CSP) managed services.

Agencies will often have resources on-premises and in the cloud for an overlapping period. As a result, they need to budget effectively to maintain their old infrastructure until the appropriate services are moved to the cloud. Once their systems are in the cloud, they then have another set of efficiencies to take advantage of; for example, turning off workloads that are not in use. If the service is only used for 8 hours, the system should only be available for 8 hours; after that, it should be turned off.

The overprovisioning of Compute Resources is a common problem that will drastically impact agencies' bottom line if cost tracking is not implemented correctly. With cloud migration, agencies must make sure to use CSPs to their advantage and monitor use to ensure their costs reflect their needs.

You may ask - why is managing Compute Resources so important? Budget constraints, mission requirements, and advancement in our adversaries' technology are the main reasons why agencies addressing Compute Resources cost tracking will be imperative in 2023. Additionally, if agencies can manage their costs efficiently, they will reduce the cost of operating IT services and be able to divert the expenditure efficiency gains to other areas. These areas may include machine learning and artificial intelligence, which can support our nation's technological advantages over international adversaries and competitors.

Analyzing: Moving to a continuous, dynamic approach

In the coming year, federal agencies will lean heavy on leveraging commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software to help understand Compute Resources utilization and gather more granular information about their IT systems to, ultimately, be able to perform trend and peak performance analysis. Additionally, they will work on standardizing their IT infrastructure to be more cloud agnostic to ensure workloads can run on any CSP in a repeatable, secure, and reliable fashion.

Since Compute Resources utilization will be very dynamic, agencies must adopt a constant auditing and improvement model. With this model, they will be able to factor in technological advancements and maturity. In response, the industry will also need to adopt a continuous improvement approach. No one solution fits all. The landscape has changed to everything as a service - transforming to a new way of doing information technology.

Leveraging: Industry interdependence

One of the main reasons cloud adoption has been slow for federal agencies is the lack of technical understanding of how managed services work at an enterprise level and how to secure workloads with a holistic approach to keep up with cybersecurity threats and vulnerability management. In 2023, we predict agencies will leverage industry partners as part of their cloud adoption to overcome knowledge-based transfer and continuous education challenges. In return, cloud adoption economics will become apparent and understandable.

2022 saw a significant increase in Compute Resources as a result of the industry's "great migration" to cloud services. 2023 will be the year that agencies are able to fully understand, manage, and leverage Compute Resources effectively for mission success.

At Sev1Tech, we take great pride in leveraging the power of the cloud and Compute Resources, rapidly delivering secure, flexible, and expandable enterprise-wide solutions to our valued government and industry partners. In 2023, we look forward to expertly guiding the adoption, migration, and management of cloud-native offerings to address the latest challenges that will arise for both commercial and government organizations.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hector Collazo is Chief Technology Officer for Sev1Tech. He leads Sev1Tech's High Impact Technology, Science, and Engineering Team (HITSE), which develops the company's long-term technology strategy and delivers innovative solutions to support the evolving needs of Sev1Tech's customers. Hector has more than 20 years of experience implementing, engineering and managing innovative technologies to transform businesses and customer experiences. Hector holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Puerto Rico and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Phoenix.