State and local governments generate and store enormous amounts of data essential to their ability to deliver citizen services. But how can they capitalize on all of their data to become engines of growth and innovation, empowering and enhancing their ability to provide services and better serve their communities?
Data doesn’t arrive on the doorsteps of government offices as a neatly packaged asset. It’s generated from a wide range of disparate sources, is in widely different formats, and is constantly on the move. To capitalize on the opportunities that data creates for the public good, state and local CIOs must harness data in motion with a cohesive strategy and platform. With that in place, government IT leaders can then apply the kinds of rich data analytics that produce copious benefits, including more informed decision-making, greater transparency, greater efficiency, and reduced costs.
It’s no secret that the cloud has become the go-to infrastructure foundation for a modern data strategy. But that alone is too broad. In reality, government organizations are in a transition state: in that they are using on-prem / private cloud / and public cloud (generally more than one vendor), so the strategic focus has shifted to hybrid multi cloud.
Hybrid cloud is the Model of Choice
As cloud computing has matured, CIOs and their teams have increasingly sought to build a best-of-both-worlds approach. They want the computing power, cost efficiencies, and other advantages of public cloud – while retaining the flexibility, control, and security of private cloud and on-premises data centers.
This is especially crucial to state and local government IT teams, who must balance their vital missions against resource constraints, compliance requirements, cybersecurity risks, and ever-increasing volumes of data. And as data sources increase – streaming data at the edge as well as enterprise data sources – and with them, the information silos created by disparate departmental data storage, for example, it’s no wonder 56 percent of IT leaders report managing and securing data to be their biggest challenge, according to a 2021 Meritalk survey.
Hybrid cloud delivers that “best-of-both” approach, which is why it has become the de facto model for state and local CIOs. According to a recent NASCIO study, 89 percent of State CIOs reported that hybrid cloud is their “ideal cloud state,” citing “the flexibility they have when placing workloads in a hybrid cloud model.” The benefits are clear: The private cloud environment allows agencies to host workloads that have unique regulatory, security, or performance requirements, while leveraging a public cloud to deploy elastic and specialized workloads that require cloud-native capabilities, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and edge computing.
The pandemic did nothing to stifle hybrid cloud strategies, either. 85 percent of those responding to the Meritalk survey say the pandemic underscored the importance of migrating to a hybrid cloud environment and 67 percent of state and local government IT leaders say they accelerated their hybrid cloud adoption timelines by a year or more.
What is a hybrid data cloud?
As hybrid cloud becomes the new normal, state and local CIOs are now asking: What role does it play in effectively managing and analyzing the enormous amounts of data that we’re generating? How does hybrid cloud help turn data into a strategic asset?
Like with the best-of-both-worlds approach to core infrastructure, a hybrid data cloud strategy combines the data management, analytics, transactional, and data science services of public and private clouds. That last piece is key because it ensures that state and local governments can unlock and act on the value of their data no matter where it’s generated or where it resides.
Just as hybrid cloud is now the de facto IT operating model, the hybrid data cloud is becoming the go-to strategy for state and local governments seeking to turn their data – all of their data – into an actionable, high-value asset.
What makes (or breaks) a hybrid data cloud?
In our ongoing conversations and research, we’ve affirmed that the hybrid data cloud approach is very real. We’ve learned that there is no one-size-fits-all here: every organization’s hybrid data cloud is at least a little bit unique. We also know it’s not actually as simple as sandwiching the word “data” between the words “hybrid cloud” – there are nuances and challenges along the way.
Fortunately, we’ve identified a pattern of 10 success factors for a hybrid data cloud. This is great news because it paves a smoother path to adoption for state and local governments – and therefore faster time-to-value.
Cloudera’s industry-leading hybrid cloud includes an integrated suite of secure cloud-native data services for data collection, engineering, warehousing, transactional analytics, data science, and reporting that can run on multiple public clouds and on-premises. Cloudera also delivers data security and governance that is controlled centrally and consistently across clouds essential to combat the prevalence and magnitude of today’s cyberattacks.
Read our complete Hybrid Data Cloud Top 10 to learn the essential elements of a successful hybrid data cloud and how Cloudera can accelerate your agency’s mission with data.
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