Conquering Complex Migration for the Federal Government

For large organizations balancing departmental and centralized control, the move to the cloud can be daunting. Organizations attempting to go it alone will quickly discover that top-down migration strategies that work for some departments can be counterproductive for others. On the other hand, allowing each department to make their own move to the cloud means a lack of centralized control and visibility, along with limited support for small departments that don't have the resources to develop their own migration plan.

While migrations like this can feel impossible, they don't have to be. What does it look like to conquer complex migration?

In this case study, we take a deep dive into the story of CDW Government’s partnership with a major government organization, made up of many agencies, to navigate a complex cloud migration. This is an example of what migration can look like for any large government or commercial organization navigating the push and pull of a multi-department structure.

When this government agency approached CDW Government for assistance with cloud migration, our team knew this would be a unique project. The agency wanted a centralized cloud setup to support its entire organization — but the many agencies comprising the umbrella of the larger organization were all in various stages of cloud adoption.

Smaller agencies within the larger organization needed help getting set up in the cloud quickly, while some larger agencies had already migrated and were using their own cloud solutions. With fully operational, independent networks, these larger departments had no interest in another time-consuming migration — or the desire to make adjustments to a system that was already working for them.

To solve this problem of moving a patchwork of departments, competencies and apps over to one centralized solution, the CDW Government team needed to develop a migration roadmap that would work for all of the various stakeholders. To begin, we initiated a readiness assessment — a "portfolio discovery" report card that indicates how ready the organization’s system was for cloud migration.

Without the right tools, portfolio discovery is incredibly labor intensive. It requires searching through an organization's existing tools and systems looking for gaps, redundancies and required patches. To simplify the process, we leveraged SkyMap, our versatile cloud migration planning software.

SkyMap utilizes tool-based discovery, crawling an organization's network to identify gaps before creating a holistic report of current system capabilities. Using SkyMap, our team was able to efficiently identify redundant or defunct apps that the government organization could immediately eliminate to save money. SkyMap was also able to identify over-provisioned systems that could be sized-down.

Though the SkyMap readiness assessment is an invaluable first step, human usage of applications isn't always reflected in system data. So, as part of portfolio discovery, we augment SkyMap data with conversations with staff about how and when tools are utilized. For example, though the

initial SkyMap report identifies a finance app as a business-critical tool, it may only be used at the end of every month to generate reports. Knowing when applications are heavily used and when they are dormant is a pivotal part of migration planning.

Readiness Assessment Speeds Success

CDW Government’s portfolio discovery process was able to save the government organization countless hours of time and research. Along with SkyMap's readiness assessment, our team of migration experts quickly and efficiently made thousands of small decisions at a much more rapid pace than the organization would have been able to make on their own. The team's deep knowledge allowed them to serve as a guiding hand, bringing two or three top options to the table to solve specified pain points, rather than forcing the organization’s staff to sift through and differentiate between dozens of possible solutions.

After assessing the current landscape, it was time to develop a road map. As an AWS partner, CDW Government has years of experience articulating common migration patterns. To guide the government organization’s migration process, we used a series of pre-planned pathways developed by CDW Government and AWS, with the option to alter or develop new pathways based on any unique departmental needs. Given the varying levels of cloud usage among the government organization’s agencies, our team placed each department into one of three categories that would help define their migration process:

Category 1: Greenfield
In the first category, our team grouped small departments with limited resources. These departments were waiting for a centralized migration plan from the government organization because they didn't have the dedicated IT staff to coordinate their own move to the cloud. For this group, the goal is simple: build something that works in the cloud so they can move and set up quickly. Because this group had little experience with the cloud, they also needed more staff training and upskilling.

Category 2: Transitional
The second category included all recent movers or transitional departments. We defined a recent mover as a department that had moved to the cloud less than 18 months before the centralized migration.

For this group, the focus was on modernizing the current setup and rapidly moving what they'd already built into the government organization’s infrastructure for visibility. For some departments, there were concerns about maintaining and improving compliance, and this became a primary focus. Essentially, the goal for all transitional accounts was to strengthen the walls and provide any supplemental training to optimize and complete their transition.

Category 3: Mass Workload Migration
The final category was for mass workload migrations. These were large, complex departments that had already transitioned to the cloud and had been fully operational for more than 18 months. For these accounts, the focus was on maintaining compliance and uptime. The CDW Government team needed to ensure that these departments could continue to run while gradually integrating into the government organization’s infrastructure.

By separating each department into its own category, CDW Government was better able to coordinate the specific migration pathways each department needed in order to migrate. Once each department had its own roadmap, it was time to put the plan to the test.

After extensive portfolio discovery and planning, the migration planning process acts as a rehearsal for mass migration. The first step it to migrate a few representative applications as proof of concept (POC) to reveal any flaws in the migration plan so they can be addressed before mass migration. For the government organization, this meant CDW Government could test tooling and processes before undertaking widespread implementation, removing the risk of extended downtime during migrations.

Again, SkyMap was at the core of the migration work — this time offering an intuitive dashboard where stakeholders could track processes in real time. With SkyMap, project leaders can see necessary approvals, reviews and ongoing and completed processes. SkyMap ensures that the migration process is completely transparent for all involved.

Once the POC has been tested and runs smoothly, it's time to migrate other systems. At the foundation of each of these technical migration processes, however, are people. To ensure a smooth and effective transition, CDW Government integrates upskilling into each migration, which we've broken into its own segment below.

The final part of the process is all about human capital. It's important for your team to feel empowered to manage their new solution, otherwise you will never maximize all of its offerings. At CDW Government, our services include a variety of training, ranging from human resources and managerial training to understanding and rewriting job descriptions for cloud utilization. For this government organization, our training offerings were tailored to the needs of the departments in the three categories.

For staff with no experience using AWS, a 101 training offered a rapid-fire introduction to AWS offerings. It also focused on how staff members could (and should) utilize AWS services, educating staff on how they can adapt their specific daily tasks to the cloud to optimize cost and ensure consistency across the organization.

The CDW Government team leverages Agile best practices throughout our training and migration processes, teaching them to our customer as we go. With Agile, organizations incrementally deliver new features in continuous consultation with the end user. For this government organization, rather than collecting a laundry list of requirements and building a system that may or not may not meet end-user needs, we gathered continuous feedback, shifting priorities based on user concerns and experience. Part of upskilling staff is showcasing Agile as a model and encouraging Agile implementation across departments — particularly for future rollouts in the cloud.

Security training is also a necessity. The AWS cloud offers powerful security settings that make it easy to meet compliance requirements. However, the AWS security toolset can be challenging to navigate without expertise. As an expert partner, our team rapidly set up and trained the organization’s security professionals on AWS security offerings, cutting down on time and acting as a trusted partner for all security and compliance concerns. Because the standard had already been set for basic security compliance, this training focused on maintaining a secure environment and improving security posturing as standards change.

Security underlies every part of CDW’s services. For a government agency like this one, which requires earning an Authority to Operate and Authority to Test (ATO/ATT) before operating, security is not just important — it's essential. The organization anticipated that proving ATO/ ATT compliance would be a huge part of their migration process. The CDW Government team sped up and simplified this process, providing 80% of the material the organization needed to achieve their cloud infrastructure ATO ahead of time.

With CDW Government’s help, the government organization transformed from a decentralized patchwork of disparate departments without internal transparency to an upskilled, security-compliant setup operating efficiently on the AWS cloud.

Some of the highlights of the migration success include:

• The entire transformation took only six months from start to finish — including a six-week government shutdown in the middle of migration.
• At the time of launch, the government organization had five active AWS accounts. A year later there are more than 60 open accounts, and that number is still growing.
• With help from CDW Government, the organization was able to not only migrate to the cloud but establish an efficient system for growth. For example, the organization can now generate new accounts in as little as 45 minutes, a process that formerly took months.

This partnership is emblematic not just of complex government projects, but of any large organization's migration to the AWS cloud.