It’s been a challenging few years for Federal IT leaders as they have navigated the way through the pandemic, sustained telework, supply chain disruptions, inflationary pressures and global political unrest. In response, agency CIOs stepped up cloud adoption, accelerated digital services, and adapted operations.
No one knows what comes next, but we do know that the network plays a critical role to power the journey ahead.
1. Network modernization is essential to sustain the speed of innovation.
Cloud-delivered applications, compute, and storage have delivered greater agility, efficiency and security for civilian and defense agencies, and the network must follow.
Network modernization simplifies IT service delivery, strengthens security, lowers cost and reduces technical debt.
As of January, the FedRAMP Authorization Management Program is part of the FY23 National Defense Authorization Act, codifying the FedRAMP program for security assessment and authorization for cloud products and services.
Cloud-managed networks, replacing traditional wireless controller architectures, deliver better network user experiences—from offices, homes and field locations to data centers and cloud instances. Staff have simple, secure and fast access to their applications and data from any location and any device. Introducing new network capabilities is far simpler, and network administration is streamlined.
Network as a service (NaaS) is an emerging delivery model for the private and public sector alike, especially for cloud or edge use cases, which allows IT teams to stop building and operating networks and start consuming them.
As agencies transition Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contracts, they have an opportunity to modernize their networks for enhanced mobility, Zero Trust security and operational efficiency. EIS is expected to deliver an average of 10-30% cost savings.
2. Accelerated move to Zero Trust architectures.
With cyberattacks on federal systems and critical infrastructure relentless, cybersecurity remains a top priority. Zero Trust strategies and actions are mandated by the end of FY24 to bolster the government’s defense against sophisticated and persistent threat campaigns.
To ensure operational readiness, networks must become threat-aware, continuously monitoring risk and actively defending against threats. Security cannot be a bolt-on to the network, but must be fully integrated across the full network stack—from access points and switches in campus networks to the data center, WAN, and cloud connections.
3. A continued focus on digital-first customer experiences.
After the pandemic forced rapid digital transformation of businesses, people increasingly expect their government services to be more accessible, faster and easy to use. Modernizing websites and maturing digital services not only improve the citizen experience, but also streamlines agency processes and saves taxpayer dollars.
Agencies’ networks must be ready to deliver digital-first customer experiences. Instead of measuring network performance with in uptime and availability, service levels must be recast based on user experience. In a highly distributed, hybrid cloud world, the traditional network metrics don’t reflect the true user experience. The user perspective, rather than the network view, is critical to ensure the quality of digital services and mission readiness. IT must have the ability to quickly identify and troubleshoot issues with application response time and performance, no matter where or how users connect.
4. AIOps will shift from primarily offering insights to delivering automated remediation.
Federal agencies are increasingly looking to adopt AI in their core services – and those advantages also can be extended network service delivery. AIOps is rapidly maturing, moving from primarily offering data-driven insights to delivering automated remediation. By automating the network across wired, wireless and WAN, issues can be remediated before users notice. Service level expectations can be maintained while IT staff spend less time reacting and troubleshooting.
The adoption of AIOps aligns with the government’s priority to improve the IT workforce. Smart, automated tools free up skilled network engineers while younger talent are empowered to do more and learn new skills.
5. The network will deliver more value.
A modern wireless network can do more than connect users, devices and applications. The addition of location services can also provide situational awareness of assets, people and work in progress that can lead to better user experiences and resource utilization.
For instance, hospitals can use indoor location services to help patients and their caregivers navigate through large facilities and arrive on time to appointments. Staff can quickly locate wheelchairs, infusion pumps or other medical equipment.
Your partner in the network modernization journey
Whether you are optimizing connectivity for thousands of devices or preparing for cloud adoption, Aruba’s solutions are designed with Federal IT objectives in mind. Aruba Central, software, access points, switches and other products adhere with US government compliance and purchasing programs. We offer both on-premises and cloud-managed options to fit your agency and use case requirements. And you can count on Aruba’s high-performance, resilient and secure wired and wireless networking that’s trusted across civilian, defense and executive branches.
