When agencies/organizations understand cloud economics of cloud computing, they can optimize their investments and obtain the greatest value for the warfighter and addressing mission needs. Listen to hear Keith Nakasone, Senior Transformation Strategist of the Public Sector at VMware discuss cloud economics with VMware VP, Yvette Edwards.
Keith Nakasone: Welcome to Mission First, the podcast dedicated to asking mission related questions to senior leaders of the federal and local governments. This podcast is published by Carahsoft, the leader in government hardware and software acquisition and is sponsored by VMware enabling customers to move quick and be free in a multi-cloud world. I am Keith Nakasone, your host. And today I have the pleasure of chatting with Yvette Edwards, Vice President for Solutions Architect and engineering for the public sector. Hi, good afternoon. Welcome to TechNet cyber. I'm here with Yvette Edwards. I'm Keith Nakasone have I had was with federal government for 32 years and now with VMware for just about two years. And we are here to talk about cloud economics. But before we do that, Yvette, can you introduce yourself?
Yvette Edwards: Thank you so much. Good afternoon, Keith. Good afternoon, everyone out there. My name is Yvette Edwards, I'm the vice president, leading our solution engineers and solution architects here at VMware. I've been with VMware over five years now.
Keith Nakasone: Great. So we're here this afternoon, we're talking, we're taking a little deeper dive into Cloud economics. You know, the, the government has been on a journey and moving to cloud. And with the, you know, last year's theme, we had all all this discussion about multi cloud and the hybrid environment. And we continue the discussions about the total cost of ownership in and around cloud economics and the people the process and the technology. So as we migrate, and as we as we continue this discussion about economics, let's start with the workforce. And so we wanted to get some of your expertise in what do government agencies need to do with their workforce to get ready for the cloud journey?
Yvette Edwards: Yeah, that's a really great question. I think that if you think about why people went to the cloud in the first place, they definitely wanted that elasticity, they definitely wanted some automation. But as far as the technology was concerned, you know, we really want they really wanted to make sure that it was the same technology they had before, if they're able to have that hybridity, and make sure that you know, they are using a VMware Cloud that is the same whether it's on prem or you know, in one of the hyper scalars, then you actually can realize some of that value, because you truly have the same technology in the same teams. Versus if you're trying to go to different clouds, as you all know, you can create quite a bit of sprawl, quite a bit of sprawl, quite a bit of silos, and then people are learning new tools, and then that may not be so economically valuable.
Keith Nakasone: That's a good point about the rescaling of the workforce, right. So when we talk about, you know, some of this subject matter experts built in silos, right? Just they no one cloud environments well, but do they know enough to move towards that multi cloud or hybrid cloud environment? So as as company as as the government thinks about, rescaling the workforce, what do you think are some of the key things that they need to concentrate on during their cloud journey?
Yvette Edwards: Yeah, I think that the reason that, it's really important to understand what your destination is, so customers need to understand what that outcome is, and why they're going to the cloud. And try to avoid because if it truly is, for cloud economics, it truly is to reduce some operating costs to increase efficiencies, they need to be wary of situations where they are retooling the workforce, because that, of course, can reduce your time to market can reduce your time to actually realize some of these goals. So I think that customers and the agencies we talked to they really truly, when they look at different tool sets and different cloud providers, one of the reasons that they're sticking with the VMware Cloud is because they get that consistency, and they get that economy of scale.
Keith Nakasone: Great. And when we talk about the reskilling, it's not just at the infrastructure layer, the platform, but it's really all the way up to the the application layer as well, right?
Yvette Edwards: Yes, it really is. Yes, yes. So we do have something at VMware, which is our cross-cloud services. So it's the same whether we're talking about infrastructure, whether we're talking about security, whether we're talking about application creation, it's the same type of services that you had on prem. So the workforce is using the tools that that they've used for a long time, the investment, the technical investment that they've used, they can now use that in the cloud.
Keith Nakasone: Awesome. So when we talk about, you know, we, in the cloud journey, we talk about the processes, right, so a lot of the on prem solution, are they able to reuse that on prem solution, or is it a complete process change? And what do they need to consider what government needs to consider for the process and the governance within the cloud space?
Yvette Edwards: Yeah, so you know, we talk a lot a lot of people in the government have experienced with Are SDDC. So you know, the abstraction layer that we have on the compute, networking and storage, and they're able to take that and extend it to the cloud by using our VMware Cloud. And so with that, they're able to have the same type of resources they had on prem. But now they have the extensibility of the different hyperscalers. If they are on Google, and they can, you know, want specific resources they are they can do that they can use specific resources on Amazon, but still have the same toolset that they had on prem.
Keith Nakasone: Right. So when we're talking about the government, side, with their standard operating procedures, they really have to have that active collaborative engagement with industry to work through the processes on what changing what roles and responsibilities are going to affect the future of their cloud journey, right. So when we talk about that governance structure, when we talk about the total view of implementing, and moving towards that cloud, smart effort, or initiative, they definitely have to look at their processes, they have to look at their documentation and moving to that sustainability, right, that ensuring that everything aligns and keeping their artifacts in place during their cloud journey.
Yvette Edwards: Yeah, that's a really good point. Because, you know, to your point, when you when you leave the safe data center, now you've increased your attack vector, right. So you want to make sure that you are taking the compliance with you taking the policy and you're taking that secure workload and when you move it from depending on where you're moving it and why you're moving it for what outcome, you have to make sure that there's policies go with it. So that governance stays with you. And that's the other value of VMware Cloud.
Keith Nakasone: Right? And so when we move into that technology space, right, we're looking at the different sets of tools that we need. So let's start with, you know, we talked about total cost of ownership, right, and we talked about, you know, how the government sets up their on prem data center, you know, those costs are allocated to different areas, right. So the capital investment, the facilities might be operated by a different and funded by a different organization. And the technology side is funded and budgeted through a another part of the organization. So when we talk about total cost of ownership, what does government have to consider when they look at the cloud as they move and migrate to a multi cloud hybrid environment?
Yvette Edwards: Yeah, and it goes back to really realizing the value of actually moving there, you know, to be honest, if if they are not using VMware Cloud, and they're trying to, you know, go native, or do other types of movement to the cloud, what can happen to it wouldn't happen to a lot of agencies is taking them a long time to move those workloads. And so in that case, they aren't realizing the total cost of ownership because they still have those on prem as well as now they've extended to the cloud. So they really should make sure that if they're trying to realize and migrate quickly, that they have a tool set that helps them migrate quickly. And that is another cost savings as well, because if you're using VMware Cloud, you're able to migrate, you know, 57% faster, because again, using the same technology, same teams, and it's more just a V motion to the cloud with no downtime. So you also have to plan for downtime, that's also part of the total cost of ownership. So if there's going to be a lot of downtime, now you've increased that, and as well as making your team unproductive.
Keith Nakasone: Right. So when we talk about discovery and assessing your get their current environment. So Prime example for the Tanzu application, and the delivery model, where government and the industry is sitting together and building together developing together, it can accelerate that process, leveraging the Agile development. Yes. So when we, when we talk about that the success rate. So let's talk about you know, we have several instances, right, we have the army Software Factory, we have the Air Force Software Factory. Let's talk about some of those successes that have been gained and where they saw some efficiencies from time. And from a cost perspective.
Yvette Edwards: Yeah, it truly is, you know, the the government agencies sitting with industry, doing world class execution of building these applications. And it's also just making sure that you have a secure supply chain. Right. So the app is built, secure from the beginning, and it's implemented securely.
Keith Nakasone: And so when we talk about security topic right now, I mean, this whole conference is focused on, you know, ensuring that we do have a secure supply chain, and we do have cybersecurity in the thought of building and developing. So as we as we look at our product offerings, and as we continue on with this effort of ensuring that we follow the standards, controls, etc, and move to the to the FedRAMP. High, as well as the DoD impact level five and six. What do you see as the progression and the acceleration of what we're doing within the company to move that forward?
Yvette Edwards: Yeah, VMware has been very, very intentional and leaning in and making sure that we provide the products that our agencies are desiring that we're making sure that we are, we even have a tenant where we want to start our product development, even new products at at least FedRAMP pi, and then progress from there. So if we can get it to 80%, of where this is all built in security, that's sort of where we're leaning into. But we have had great success in federal FedRAMP pie, as well as Aisle Five. And you know, we're working on getting to those other impact levels. So it is working progress, but we definitely have that intentionality.
Keith Nakasone: So, you know, we talk about the journey. And you know, sometimes when we get into this discussion about the people, the process and technology, we we see some of the themes that are coming out and from what can we do to help and how can we help government agencies move forward? And, and be more responsive to their mission requirements? What are some of the tips or some of the things that we can do to help government to accelerate their migration to the cloud?
Yvette Edwards: Yeah, I think it really helps with understanding the mission, understanding what those outcomes are, and the agencies, the government are very similar than private industry, they are moving to the cloud or on a cloud journey for specific reasons. So it's helping them realize those goals as fast as they can, the more that they delay, or the more that those workloads that they need to move or modernize aren't happening, you know, that total cost of ownership continues to grow. So we really want to help them make an impact and truly realize those operational efficiencies that they want. So it's, it's leaning in with them understanding their outcome, building a future state, and helping them get from that current state to the future state, helping them with milestones that are attainable, as well, as you know, some aspirational ones are great, too. But we want to make sure that we are on the journey with them to attain those milestones.
Keith Nakasone: Absolutely. Thanks for this discussion. This is really great. We do have some reports that and some analyst reports that have been created, that talks about our cloud solution and the cloud economics that are going to be available, and we will provide you those links as well. But Yvette Thank you for having this discussion with me and thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you so much for being on our podcast today. And for all of our listeners. Don't forget to tune in to the next episode of Mission First.