Beyond the Hype: Using Clouds to Modernize the Federal Enterprise

David Lucas

Chief Strategy Officer

Last June, the Office of Management and Budget halted large federal IT projects worth $30 billion pending review

The End of Too Big To Fail in the Federal Government

The Current State of Financial Modernizations

$6.9 billion and 6 years over budget . $340 million spent before the project was cancelled. $52 million spent before the project cancelled. $30 million and one year over budget project cancelled.

Some modernizations have been given the green light - others have been slowed, segmented into smaller pieces, or cancelled altogether

The Spotlight is on Financial Management Projects

The cloud addresses many of the major concerns that arise in the traditional business model, eliminating long implementation times, using proven systems, and providing scalability

A New Paradigm

Federal Government Cloud Initiatives

The Federal Government is now a proponent of cloud-based solutions -- establishing standards and offering a range of tools and resources to federal agencies

The Software as a Service (SaaS) model delivers a financial solution that is “pre-configured” to meet federal business processes with the result of simplifying and streamlining daily tasks

SaaS Model for Financial Management

We don’t start with a blank sheet of paper - our cloud-based model eliminates much of the risk of the traditional system implementation approach

Innovative Model

Cloud-based SaaS solutions offer immediate benefits by eliminating hardware and software investments and providing a predictable cost model

Low Cost to Join the Cloud

Services are delivered via fixed-price contracts and managed by Service Level Agreements (SLAs) which customers can closely monitor and choose to expand or terminate at any point

Pay As You Go, Pay As You Grow

Security is hardened for multi-tenancy within the public cloud which enables inter-organizational security and meets federal security standards

Security

Accelerating the time to deployment is the key benefit of this model - customers can be up and running in months rather than years

Faster Time to Operational Capability

The SaaS model allows you to begin concentrating on the most challenging areas - change management, legacy system integration and data migration

Attack Your Most Difficult Problems on Day One

The roll out of a new service to the user community requires a significant effort -- support from the senior federal leadership is critical

Change Management is the Critical Activity

Manage the Ripple Effect

Many times the reach of the change extends far beyond the doors of the financial community. Recognize that a change, even small, becomes significant when thousands of users are affected.

Change will often extend far beyond the doors of the financial community - a change, even small, becomes significant when thousands of users are affected

Plan for Legacy Data Issues

Difficulties dealing with legacy data integrity in the migration process are often symptomatic of the inefficiencies of the legacy system. Plan to deal with it before, during and after implementation.

Test Drive the Data

Giving new users the opportunity to test drive the system with real data is an effective way to help a new user community identify with and adopt a new system

Government Needs to Look to Industry

The role of government is to promote innovation by asking industry to bid solutions in the form of a service

Industry Opportunity for Growth

The search is on for standardized and regulated transaction processes that industry can invest in to create services