Introduction
In today’s landscape, federal agencies are witnessing significant enhancements in public services and threat mitigation globally, thanks to evolving cloud technologies. The future holds substantial expansion in government adoption of these technologies, as Gartner forecasts that over half of agencies will transition critical applications to the cloud by 2025. According to GovWin, the budget request for cloud investments is $8.3B for 2025.
Many agencies struggle to adopt best practices for cloud migration, as shown by the significant drop in scores on the 17th Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) scorecard released in January 2024. Despite this, agencies have made strides. Carol Harris, director of cybersecurity and technology at the Government Accountability Office, states that cloud adoption has saved the government nearly $30 billion.
REI has supported these advancements by participating in government-wide cloud initiatives and advising federal cloud leaders. We have provided strategic and tactical support for the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy (“Cloud Smart”) priorities with our Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and General Services Administration (GSA) Office of Governmentwide Policy (OGP) customers.
This experience has provided us with unique insights into pain points and best practices across agencies.
Other initiatives we supported include:
- The Data Center and Cloud Optimization Initiative (DCCOI) Project Management Office (PMO) within GSA OGP, ensuring government agencies achieve optimization goals with the right tools and resources for implementation.
- The government-wide Cloud and Infrastructure (C&I) Community of Practice, collaborating in working groups and special projects to promote best practices and innovative solutions. Key deliverables include the Cloud Operations Best Practices and Resources Guide and the Federal Cloud Tagging Strategy Guide—many of which are publicly available on CIO.gov.
- Modernizing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s laboratory data system with ALIS, a cloud-native application that enhances inspector communication and reporting. ALIS earned recognition as a FedHealthIT Disruptive Award Winner.
- Helping the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) migrate a 150+ microservice grants system to the cloud using a thoughtful, low-risk approach that maintains business continuity and maximizes Return on Investment (ROI).
- Supporting the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) since 2018 in modernizing its 30+ immigration product lines in the cloud. An incremental approach prioritizes frequently used functionality to maximize benefits.
REI’s Mindful Modernization™ approach emphasizes understanding business challenges, not just technology, creating effective solutions. Our Mindful Cloud Migration Framework ensures cloud resources meet specific needs, objectives, and compliance requirements.
Our Mindful Cloud Migration Framework
REI’s Mindful Cloud Migration Framework is encompasses our modernization experience, change management philosophy, and fundamental architecture principles from cloud solution providers such as AWS, Azure, and Google. REI’s processes provide the necessary planning, control, and execution mechanisms for introducing change at the right place at the right time.
REI’s Framework involves a repeatable, phased approach, as described in figure 1 below:
- Align to Develop Vision and Goals: We conduct detailed assessments and planning with stakeholders to understand the vision, future business needs, and current challenges and gaps. We then develop a coherent vision and roadmap that can be used as a “north star” to guide progress for the teams and stakeholders.
- Architect and Plan for Cloud: We develop the strategy for migration, based on the output of the Align phase. Our experts have deep expertise in architecting similar platforms and solutions that balance governance with flexibility and align with agency cloud guidelines.
- Assemble and Implement Cloud Solution: We develop and implement the migration strategy in an Agile manner with our Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Level 3 appraised Agile Delivery Framework (ADF).
- Adopt Through Change Management and Training: This step occurs in parallel with the Assemble phase and ensures smooth execution and adoption of migrated business functions. We bring Organizational Change Management (OCM) practices and collaborate extensively with stakeholders to support the adoption of the migrated solution.
- Advance Business Functionality with Post-Deployment Support: We monitor and maintain the migrated applications in the cloud and focus on cost optimization as well as refinement of the business functionality through continuous improvement.
PHASE 1: ALIGN
In the initial phase of a cloud migration using the Mindful Modernization approach we conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the existing business and IT environment.
Business
REI starts by understanding the customer’s cloud migration goals and vision, whether it’s a complete or partial migration. We identify key stakeholders early on and engage with them frequently to ensure alignment on goals, expectations, and outcomes. This includes technical teams, executive sponsors, business units, and end users. It’s crucial to consider their diverse perspectives and establish a shared understanding of the expected outcomes for the cloud.
Identifying compliance requirements, the current state of data assets, overall data strategy, and other risks associated with moving to the cloud is essential for a smooth and secure transition. This phase lays the groundwork for developing a strategic migration plan that aligns with organizational goals and minimizes disruptions to operations.
Technical
This phase involves identifying which applications and workloads are suitable for migration to the cloud, understanding their dependencies and data, and determining the complexity and readiness for the move. The assessment should also include a cost-benefit analysis –considering both direct and indirect costs – to justify the migration.
For example, at HRSA, when starting the Electronic Handbooks (EHBs) cloud modernization journey in Microsoft Azure, REI conducted thorough market research about available options and performed analysis of the current application portfolio. We also conducted extensive stakeholder expectation discussions. This led to the baseline inventory of applications to be migrated to the cloud.
In preparation of the cloud migration of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Small Business Research (SBIR) platform, REI leveraged the AWS Cloud Readiness Assessment (CART) process as a framework to analyze current state and future capability across the business, people, process, platform, operations and security dimensions. This activity helped REI plan for the appropriate efforts and resources to ensure successful cloud migration for our SBIR platform.
This discovery process results in a holistic description of an organizational portfolio, which includes resources such as operating systems, servers, databases, storage, network devices, etc. The dimensions to consider are listed in Table 1 below.
PHASE 2: ARCHITECT
PHASE 2: ARCHITECTIn this phase, we analyze the findings from the Align phase and conduct a comparative study on the available choices of cloud platform and service model such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) based on the applications to be migrated.
We also provide an overview of the financial impact of the choices to help with decision making. We not only look at the upcoming migration strategy but also at the bigger picture of what is already in the cloud. We identify current, underutilized resources combined with the “net new need” and evaluate current reserved instances and savings plan opportunities.
Armed with this information, we recommend the best course of action for each application in terms of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. This involves developing a migration strategy and roadmap to move existing workloads to the cloud, focused on reducing risk, time, and cost.
Migration Strategies: Industry best practices define 7 possible strategies for migration, as described in figure 2 below:
- Retire: Decommission once the functionality is built out in other systems.
- Retain: Retain the application as-is, either due to COTS or unique functionality.
- Rehost: Lift and shift the application from on-premises to cloud using the same hardware/software.
- Relocate: Leverage the same technology stack or platform version, hosted in the cloud.
- Repurchase: Use SaaS offering or COTS/ASP solution.
- Replatform: Update all the application layers (presentation, application, data) using cloud-native or cloud-agnostic technologies.
- Refactor/Re-architect: Rewrite the entire application using cloud-native technologies.
In the last step of this phase, we design the target state architecture based on the chosen migration strategy. This architecture includes the appropriate network design and integration mechanisms with other systems, high availability and redundancy, as well as appropriate security controls for regulatory and zero trust framework compliance.
PHASE 3: ASSEMBLE
In this phase, we identify the necessary cloud services based on the chosen platform, service model, and migration strategy. Our cross-functional agile teams then implement the migration iteratively, ensuring high quality as they incrementally move the legacy application to the cloud.
In GSA’s Personal Property Management System (PPMS), we migrated a legacy mainframe application to GSA’s FAS Cloud Services (FCS) using Agile methodology. This approach was crucial for the successful launch, allowing us to adapt quickly when the agency’s expectations and priorities changed.
PHASE 4: ADOPT
PHASE 4: ADOPTUsing Mindful Modernization™ for training and change management during a cloud migration project provides a focus on the human aspect of the transition. We clearly communicate the migration’s purpose and benefits to all stakeholders from the start, ensuring they understand the reasons behind the change. Our communications team keeps everyone updated and aligned throughout the transition.
PHASE 5: ADVANCE
This Operations Management phase enforces governance throughout the life cycle by establishing budgets, managing costs, and allocating resources based on business units. It includes setting policies and implementing controls, as well as managing configurations, patches, applications, incidents, problems, observability, events, performance, and capacity. In cloud modernizations and migrations, there is no direct one-to-one relationship between on-prem resources (CPU, Memory) and cloud resources. Over-provisioning and underutilization are common, and moving applications to the cloud is just the beginning. The cloud offers a variety of instance types and sizes, and each cloud service provider provides numerous tools for cost, usage, billing, and performance management to aid in optimization efforts.
There are many third-party tools that provide a unified view for managing a multicloud environment. By monitoring and analyzing your current service usage, you can gain insights into instance performance and usage patterns. Analyzing one month of data helps capture workload and business peaks. Regular monthly or quarterly reviews can identify anomalies or cyclical peaks that impact resource utilization and costs.
Resource scheduling is another optimization strategy, allowing you to turn off resources when not in use and turn them back on when needed. This is particularly useful for dev and test servers, which typically don’t need to run 24/7, saving up to 64% of monthly costs.
Storage also requires monitoring and optimization. Snapshots, logging, unattached storage, and storage tiering can increase monthly expenses. Managing these through rightsizing, archiving, and deletion will help create an optimized storage architecture.
Once a steady operational state is achieved, we explore discount offerings from Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) to save money. These include reserved instances, savings plans, consolidated billing, and enterprise discounts. Depending on the structure and governance, these savings can benefit not only the migration effort but the entire cloud environment.
Optimization efforts embrace FinOps principles by introducing patterns for various workloads. It begins with structuring cloud contracts and accounts to allocate costs to the appropriate consumers and funding streams. This ensures that costs from untagged or untaggable resources are assigned to the correct account holder and funding source. By leveraging the contract structure, we ensure that contracts, accounts, and subaccounts align costs with the funding and associated consumers, regardless of your Cloud Service Providers (CSP).
Conclusion
The journey to cloud migration is a transformative process that requires careful planning, strategic execution, and continuous optimization. REI’s Mindful Cloud Migration Framework provides a comprehensive approach that addresses the unique challenges and needs of federal agencies, ensuring a smooth transition to the cloud. By leveraging best practices, lessons learned, and a deep understanding of the federal landscape, REI helps agencies achieve their cloud goals while maximizing return on investment and minimizing disruptions. This framework not only supports the technical aspects of migration but also emphasizes the importance of change management and stakeholder engagement, ensuring that the benefits of cloud adoption are fully realized.
About the Authors
Rujuta Waknis
Vice President of Digital Solutions, REI Systems
Rujuta Waknis is the Vice President of Digital Solutions. She has over 20 years of experience driving technology strategy and digital innovation.
Contact her at: rujuta.waknis@reisystems.com
Chetan Rane
REI Offering Lead for Digital Transformation
Chetan Rane is the Offerings Lead for Digital Transformation at REI Systems. He has over a decade of experience driving innovative solutions in government IT modernization and digital transformation.
Contact him at: crane@reisystems.com
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