From scalability to lessened IT expenses and increased data security there are countless advantages to migrating to the cloud. In fact, moving to the cloud is the newest survival necessity for healthcare organizations and agencies.
Despite the advantages of shifting from legacy systems to the cloud some agencies still fear change especially as it pertains to security. “Concerns about safety are on everyone’s minds,” explains Mason McDaniel, Chief Technology Officer, US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) in a recent Q+A. “As the public sector’s capabilities and needs have changed, so has the security strategy. The federal government is not known for being good at letting go of control. Many people were comfortable with running our own data centers, so convincing them that data should be hosted by a company was a difficult process.”
To counter this concern technology leaders proved that the best way to overcome resistance to cloud migration is to tie it back to business needs. In the instance of transiting from legacy systems to the cloud for the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Sanjay Koyani, executive director for innovation, Office of the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for US HHS notes that, because of the agency’s profoundly important mission and need to adapt to changing technology, they assessed business needs and from there analyzed where integration, consolidation, and collaboration needed to occur.
Once an agency is committed to making the change federal agents suggest determining a clear-cut strategy to cloud migration. In creating this strategy they must decide what steps need be taken to maintain the systems long-term.
“Migrating to the cloud is not a race. Slow and steady still works,” says Mark Failor, senior alliance director for Infor. “When you’re developing a new strategy, there needs to be a lot of conversation about what you want, what your standards need to be, and about what kind of portability you’ll need to ensure that data can move. That can be especially challenging when there are directives with no funding and no schedule attached. But if you have the right conversations, if you deploy only when you have a plan and workforce in place, you will start to see an ecosystem forming in the cloud.”
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