Pamela Wise-Martinez, chief cloud and enterprise data architect at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, has called for a consolidated approach to the federal government’s efforts in federal cloud acquisitions, saying it should employ hybrid cloud instead of separate multi-cloud environments.
She said at an FCW event on Wednesday that the previous cloud procurement landscape resulted in numerous enterprise challenges and a consolidated, on-premise approach would help agencies leverage a hyperconverged infrastructure and streamline operations, MeriTalk reported Monday.
The data architect emphasized the importance of governance in pursuing federal cloud and advised agencies to look back at engineering basics to identify how to manage applications’ interoperability.
“We didn’t really think about that integration part. Hybrid cloud is the reality check,†she said. “Some of the things that you have on your infrastructure need to talk to the things that are in the cloud. So now how are you going to do that? You don’t have a standard.â€
While it may be impractical for agencies to audit all of their cloud applications, they should conduct an “appropriate assessment” of software, she added.
Wise-Martinez, who holds more than 20 years of experience in network engineering, has served in various senior support roles in enterprise IT architecture at the Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
