Cloud.gov: More than a stepping stone to the cloud
So, your agency is considering a move off cloud.gov and building a custom cloud platform. Your agency has been using cloud.gov for a while now, it works well and everyone is enjoying the experience. However, your team has heard that cloud.gov is a stepping stone for agencies to move to their own cloud platform. Is it time to migrate off cloud.gov to a custom made cloud instance?
Cloud.gov doesn’t need to be a stepping stone. It is a platform as a service (PaaS) designed to make your agency’s cloud experience easier. Cloud.gov currently supports mission-critical applications for some of the federal government’s most visible agencies, and enables highly-available and resilient solutions the American public depends on.
Your agency has used cloud.gov for a while and knows it works. Why should your agency take additional resources and years to build a custom cloud platform when everyone is happy with the current setup?
For most agencies, one cloud service will not meet all your cloud needs. This means that cloud.gov can go hand-in-hand with other cloud providers. Your agency can use cloud.gov for one need and another provider for another. It doesn’t need to be all one solution and is fairly common for agencies to have separate cloud providers to meet specific needs.
Cloud.gov provides many different benefits for our customers. Those benefits include::
Experience managing highly trafficked cloud services
The cloud.gov team has deep experience working with highly trafficked sites and consuming cloud services. This allows us to be more efficient, and offer cloud services at a lower cost than an agency building their own cloud. More efficient use of cloud services also allows us to reduce our carbon footprint, a key Administration priority.
Managed software updates
Cloud.gov engineers are constantly managing updates to the platform and doing software patches. If your agency moves off of cloud.gov, you will need to have staffed or contracted engineers to do this work.
We handle the compliance so your agency doesn’t have to
Cloud.gov is FedRAMP authorized and our compliance posture enables a more streamlined Authority to Operate (ATO) process Migrating off cloud.gov, your agency would require at least one full time person to ensure the new system is compliant. Rather than maintaining costly infrastructure, cloud.gov allows your team to focus on your core agency work.
Support for developers
Cloud.gov offers developer support to customers to assist with any questions about the cloud platform. Without this extra support, your developers will be on their own to troubleshoot any problems happening with their platform.
Agreements and billing made easy
The interagency agreement process is an easy onramp to cloud.gov. We manage the signup and renewal process so your agency doesn’t have to worry about this. The only thing required from you is a cost estimator and a prep survey that will help complete the necessary forms for an agreement.
Putting all of the pieces together
It often takes many different components to make a cloud platform work. Cloud.gov uses a variety of commercial products and services to make the platform run. You do not need to worry about managing these different pieces. Leaving cloud.gov, this would fall into your agency’s responsibilities.
An interface with an ecosystem of add ons to enhance your mission such as search.gov, U.S. Web Design System, etc.
Technology Transformation Services (TTS) offers a variety of add-on solutions (in addition to cloud.gov). cloud.gov’s close collaboration with these teams, including search.gov, U.S. Web Design System, and login.gov to name a few, allows for quick access to these services.
The overhead of running a successful cloud platform in government can be significant. Before your agency migrates away from cloud.gov, ensure they develop contingency plans for the services cloud.gov provides. Cloud.gov is here to help your agency and to make the government more efficient. There is no need to move away from a platform that is flexible and able to meet your needs.
