Cloud Summit: The Roadmap to Transformation

Federal agencies have only begun to explore the benefits of the cloud. Without a doubt, five years into the federal government’s “Cloud First” policy, cloud is delivering important results—most notably the ability to quickly deploy IT resources and scale up operations as requirements change. But in most agencies, the greater potential for transformation remains largely untapped. With the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) bringing a renewed emphasis on IT reform, that needs to change.

It is not simply a question of gaining ever-higher levels of efficiency, flexibility, and scalability. Instead it is a matter of leveraging those benefits to transform operations. In an August 2015 study, Forrester Research described cloud as a disruptive technology, one that fundamentally shifts how an organization delivers IT services. Likewise, a June 2015 report from ISACA called on organizations to focus their energies on improving “business agility”—not just delivering services more effectively but developing new services that support an organization’s operations.

This summit—which will spotlight the intersection of technology, policy and management strategies—will provide federal IT leaders with insights into how they can build on and extend their existing investments in the cloud to truly transform IT operations and how those operations support the mission of their agencies.

Potential topics to be addressed include:

• The real driving factors behind cloud adoption
• Cloud deployment and service models
• The DevOps difference
• Cloud as a platform for mobility and unified collaboration
• Cloud security and management best practices
• Lessons learned from DOD’s cloud transition
• Cloud and FITARA