6 Key Benefits of Infrastructure as Code for the Federal Government

Software development has evolved over the years. Legacy technology and a lack of cloud services used to mean that physical assets required manual configuration. Now, the development of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) has helped solved the challenges of the past.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the managing of infrastructure through the use of code instead of manual processes. IaC configuration files are created with the specifications required by your organization, which makes them easier to edit and distribute.

Over the past decade, Infrastructure as Code has become a prominent automation tool for networks, virtual machines, load balancers and connection topologies. The development of these automation tools has helped provide consistency through your organization via quick deployment, load balancing, and it’s ease of use.

These automation tools have changed the technological landscape and made it easier to manage cloud and physical infrastructures. Federal agencies are constantly looking for ways to optimize and modernize their IT infrastructures. Automation tools such as IaC can help meet many of their IT challenges and demands.

Federal agencies have a set of priorities and challenges when optimizing their IT infrastructure. The benefits that IaC provides are designed to enable safe automation while also ensuring that the demands and challenges agencies face are fulfilled.

Benefits IaC offers include:

1. Consistency: Federal agencies need consistency to help ensure that their IT infrastructure runs seamlessly, even when infrastructure demands increase. Repeatability of IaC is the whole point of these automation tools. The repeatability helps to guarantee consistent configurations and ensure seamless integrations with the existing applications.
   
   
2. Staffing: Agencies have constant staffing challenges. The ease that IaC offers is a great solution to those staffing challenges. IaC tools help ensure that no single person is the sole owner of crucial company information, which makes deployment easy without much oversight required.
   
   
3. Security: Keeping networks and applications secure is the number-one priority for the federal government. Having IaC at the ground level helps ensure that every deployment has the same level of security as the first. If the organization changes any security protocols, it is easy to adjust the code to reflect the new safety protocols.
   
   
4. Financial Savings: Cost is a major challenge for the federal government, especially when it comes to finding budget to modernize their IT infrastructure.  IaC helps reduce unnecessary costs at every level of the development pipeline. Ensuring that there are no bumps along the way helps the staff to focus on other critical tasks and not waste limited time and resources.
   
   
5. Agile: Government agencies have to be able to quickly react to changing demands. IaC offers the capability to quickly deploy code to help load-balance high levels of demand.
   
   
6. Business Continuity: Because of the constant demand on the federal government, agencies need to ensure their systems run seamlessly without any interruption. IaC helps infrastructures run seamlessly by being able to deploy complex configured code without delaying the development process.  

Now that you know more about the amazing benefits of IaC, the next step is to start a conversation to determine what is the right software for your organization. The selection process requires a deep-dive assessment into your organization to ensure that every requirement you have is met.

CDW-G can help you find the right IaC solution and partner for your agency. We are with you at every step of the process and we help provide the knowledge you will need to have a seamless implementation.