MCP's informational podcast series features the firm’s subject-matter experts and other industry leaders exploring a wide range of timely topics pertaining to mission-critical communications.
In this episode of the Mission Critical Partners Podcast Network, we discuss the benefits of cloud implementations for public sector organizations. We are joined by three Mission Critical Partners, Eric Caddy, Vice President and Director of Network at 911, Jamie Sullivan, senior technical specialist, and Gary Pulford, Director of Product Management.
- Eric Caddy, senior project manager, Eric is a PMP with extensive experience managing statewide and regional NG911 projects, including strategic planning, budget planning, stakeholder engagement, consensus building and implementation oversight. Eric brings more than 20 years of emergency communications experience to MCP, leading technical and operational public safety projects for the military, state and local governments. Eric has the ability to enable communications between diverse stakeholders with competing priorities to achieve project success for clients. He has served numerous California agencies, including the State of Nebraska, the State of California, the State of Arizona, the City and County of San Francisco, the State of California, The El Paso–Teller County 911 Authority, and the San Diego Urban area Security Initiative (UASI).
- Jamie Sulliva, senior technology specialist, Jamie has years of project management experience leading technical teams that develop, integrate, and deploy complex computing solutions. He thoroughly understands the technologies serving today’s businesses, public safety agencies, and consumers (network, mobile, messaging, etc.). In addition, Jamie has managed infrastructure buildout projects supporting PSAP cutover plans to ensure functionality, redundancy, and security. He is a strategic thinker and practical decision-maker.
- Gary Pulford, director of product management, Gary has extensive senior-level experience in sales, business development and marketing. His skills include leading sales team strategies to support state and local governments and guiding the team by removing roadblocks, leading initiatives and overseeing the entire sales cycle. He creates a vision and utilizes his skills of collaboration to achieve successful outcomes. In addition, Gary has consulted with state and local agencies on broadband expansion for Smart City initiatives.
- The episode is moderated by Glenn Bischoff, MCP content specialist and former editor of Urgent Communications and Fire Chief magazines.
Announcer:
Welcome to the Mission Critical Partners Podcast Network. Today, we're discussing with industry thought leaders how public sector organizations are evolving and how the transformation will result in improved outcomes in the communities they serve. The MCP Podcast Network is hosted by former journalist and current MCP Content Specialist Glenn Bischoff. Here's Glenn Bischoff.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Greetings, and welcome to the MCP Podcast Network. I'm Glenn Bischoff, Content Specialist at MCP. And I'd like to tell you that we're going to be discussing today about the benefits of cloud implementations for public sector organizations. And I'm joined by three colleagues from MCP, starting with Eric Caddy, who is Vice President and Director of Network 911. Jamie Sullivan, who is a Senior Technical Specialist here at MCP. And last but not least, Gary Pulford, Director of Product Management here at MCP.
So, gentlemen, thank you so much for carving out time for us today, and we're really looking forward to hearing your thoughts. So, we'll just jump right into the topic questions and the first one. Eric, I'm going to come to you first, and it reads like this. On a high level, what other pros and cons for each of the cloud environments that exist? Native/public, private and hybrid?
Eric Caddy:
Great. Thanks, Glenn. Good morning, good afternoon, everybody. So, looking at cloud environments and we move into thinking about legacy or historical. If we think about a private cloud, that's typically synonymous with you hosting your own data or information in your own data center or perhaps at your agency if you're a public safety entity.
And some of the pros and cons there with that is clearly if it's in your own data centers, your housing, so you're holding the control over the hardware, the software, the applications. It's all you localized to your cloud that you have created and designed. Some of the downside with that might be that you actually have to have the IT capabilities and resources to manage that solution. It's probably involving some kind of virtualization. You have to ensure applications can run in that environment. You have to ensure that you have the staff to not only maintain the environment and install and configure.
When you start to look at a hybrid environment, that starts to move us towards what we refer to as the public cloud or native cloud. Hybrid is a mix where you are still housing or holding some of those resources or applications in maybe your own data center or within your premise. And then looking at moving into a native or public cloud, which are some of our big cloud providers that everybody's probably familiar with are Google Public cloud, Amazon Web Service, and Microsoft Azure, the big three. So, in that environment, you're starting to offload some of the responsibility. Perhaps maybe you don't have as many IT resources that you typically might find in a large-scale IT operations. So, you're seeing an advantage to separating some of your items between the localized or private cloud and a publicly provided cloud service. Excuse me.
And then finally, if we look at public cloud, that's really, we're moving more towards what's commonly referred to as maybe infrastructure as a service or software as a service, different types of applications that are running completely in a cloud environment. So really, that is now you've moved a lot of the IT responsibilities from a perspective, an insulation perspective and upkeep perspective into the cloud providers realm. So you're kind of offloading that responsibility from your agency. And now you're just focused on that, having that appropriate connectivity to then use those applications that are coming from a cloud backend. So, the pros there, obviously, it reduces your cost of IT support and maintenance that you have to consider and your strategy around that. So that's kind of the strategy for moving to a cloud environment.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Thank you, Eric. It's a lot of ground that you just covered. Jamie, what do you have to add to what Eric said?
Jamie Sullivan:
Well, primarily for 911, you know the pros are those things that you said, but also accessibility, you know being anywhere with internet access, flexibility, availability, all those sorts of things with those software applications running in a cloud environment. It's much easier, much quicker to make changes, to scale up, to move components around if necessary, in a disaster situation, spin up new instances of software applications, that kind of thing much quicker, much easier. And all independent of you, the customer, and you try to do it for you and in a matter of minutes. Oftentimes, it's ready to go.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Yeah, it sounds like a very big advantage. Gary, what do you have to add to what Eric and Jamie said?
Gary Pulford:
So, I just wanted to clarify on the public cloud side; there are really two different flavors of public cloud. There's a enterprise-class public cloud, and then you have a .gov, which is a CJIS compliant version of public cloud. And depending on what type of workloads and data you're going to store will drive you towards that you'll need for your cloud solution, I'd also add that given the legacy nature of a lot of public safety applications that may not be actually moving to you know a cloud environment, you'll likely find yourself in the need of a hybrid solution to support some of these older legacy, be it maintained platforms or older solutions sets that you know the vendor may not even be around anymore.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
And are some of those [inaudible] just incapable of being moved into the cloud? Is that a factor as well?
Gary Pulford:
Well, there's a cost for the vendor to actually rearchitect in a cloud environment. So, if it's a discontinued application, I wouldn't anticipate a vendor wanting to actually incur the cost.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Sure. That makes a lot of sense. So again, we're talking about the three types, the three essential types of cloud environments, native/public, private and hybrid. And Gary, thank you for making that distinction regarding the native. But I'm wondering, of these three, are any better suited to public sector organizations and the others? Why do you believe that? And so, Jamie, I'd like to go to you first with that question.
Jamie Sullivan:
Okay. Sure. I think, yeah, that really hybrid is for 911, for Next Generation 911, which is, you know, a lot of the activity that's happening in that space right now. Hybrid's really the solution because you have a public component that's necessary as well as the secure private piece. So, you'll keep all of the 911 applications in a private environment, but you've got to provision that environment. You need data to get into that environment. And that's the public method, the public access method. So, you have like GIS data, for example, OS information, you know phone record updates, that sort of thing, they'll upload that to the public side of it. And then, the private cloud will pull it in and use it as necessary. So really, I think for 911, particularly NextGen 911 projects, hybrid is the solution that makes most sense.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Thank you, Jamie. Gary, do you agree? Or do you have something else in mind?
Gary Pulford:
Yeah, I would agree. And I think it's part of the overall digital transformation that an agency or a public sector agency is going to go through. I think initially you'll be in a hybrid environment, but I believe over time, and we're seeing more and more of it as more the applications are moving to a cloud environment, which gives you more, to Jamie's point, more scalability, more flexibility. You know the ability to ramp up compute not having to worry about maintaining and upgrading hardware components has a lot of advantages is to public sector companies or agencies.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Thank you, Gary. Eric, how would you wrap it up?
Eric Caddy:
Yeah, I think both Jamie and Gary have both touched on it very well. I think that we see it today in the hybrid piece that's occurring around us. And I think it's going to stay there for quite a while as the transition occurs, not just with NextGen, but Gary brought up a great point. You have still a lot of legacy applications out there in the public safety space. And you know you're likely not going to see vendors willing to invest the dollars to migrate or rearchitect, re-engineer those applications.
So, I think hybrid probably makes most [inaudible] comes around really that individual agency really having a strategy about what they want to do and why they're doing it. So again, it gets back to understanding you know what is your mission? What are your objectives? What's your strategic plan for your agency? And making sure that you have a plan that considers these things. And over time, how do you want to evolve your organization?
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Thank you, Eric. All right. So, we've been talking a little bit on a high level about, you know, the benefits of moving to the cloud, but let's peel back the onion a little bit. And the question is this, are there any specific benefits that public sector organizations will realize from moving infrastructure and/or operations to the cloud? And if so, are any of them more important than others? And Gary, I'd like to start with you for that question?
Gary Pulford:
Well, I think you know you get the benefit in a cloud environment of actually having, you know, the point we discussed earlier is constant upgrading of hardware and equipment, 7/24 supported. It's access to that data, whether it's remoter or within the facility itself. I think COVID actually gave a lot of insight to folks when they had limited access of resources to go into a data center and support it. The cloud environment provides you that remote access and remote support that you may not otherwise have the ability to support with limited resources in the IT department
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Sense. Eric, what do you think?
Eric Caddy:
Yeah, Jamie touched on several of these early on in the conversation. You know, scalability, security, there's a lot of benefits from moving aspects, some, or all of your applications into a cloud environment. Gary touched on the thing here is, you know, it reduces the amount of your direct IT staff you've got to be thinking about. And you know we know there are a lot of agencies out there that may have great IT staff, you know so, but there are also those agencies that don't have the depth in their IT groups either at a county or a regional level, and it gives them a solution for that kind of passing off that maintenance to the experts, if you will, the people that have dedicated staff that works on keeping up with the technology in the cloud provider realm, you know that's their job, their mission. So, I think it's a great opportunity that can be leveraged.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Thank you, Eric. So, Jamie, what are your thoughts regarding specific benefits for public sector organizations in terms of moving their operations and/or infrastructure into the cloud? And are there any that kind of rise to the top in terms of importance?
Jamie Sullivan:
Cost, you could save a significant chunk of money going to the cloud. You may or may not, depending on the solution. Security in a very sort of hackable IT world that we live in here, you know you can gain a lot from outsourcing that risk sort of to another party to manage that for you. If speed of deployment is an issue for you, that can happen a lot quicker in the cloud as well.
There's other we kind of touched on it a little bit, but there's a specific use case I want to bring up, and that is something that's come to light recently with COVID, and that is, organizations are considering at home or remote call taking as a disaster scenario, a disaster recovery type solution where you know like with COVID, if people can't be around others because of a virus, or maybe there's bad weather, or whatever it might be, that might be something you're looking to do as a backup down the road. And the cloud certainly enables that.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Well, we've heard about instances where it would've been unthinkable before COVID, but 911 centers allowing telecommunicators to field emergency calls from their homes. Something that wouldn't have could see you before COVID did, but it was done out of necessity. And as it turned out, it worked just fine, from what I understand.
So, you know, we talked about the resiliency factor here, you know, in a bug-out situation. Having your infrastructure in the cloud makes it easier for you to transfer your operations to someplace else. That's what I've been told. And so, can you speak to that a little bit? And then also in a cybersecurity, if you're a victim of ransomware, being able to restore you know your systems and your networks and your infrastructure, your applications if the backups are in the cloud, it just gets easier to do that restoration. Am I right about that?
Jamie Sullivan:
Absolutely. Yeah. New instances can be spun up very quickly. Data can be moved around in the cloud much easier. New compute instances, new storage, that sort of thing. Recovery is certainly a benefit of the cloud, a huge benefit. You don't have to wait for resources physically on-site, that sort of thing. So, yeah, it's a big benefit there.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Gary and Eric, do you have anything to add regarding resiliency?
Gary Pulford:
Well, I think the cloud allows you to virtualize those environments. So, you're a little bit less at risk to physical infrastructure issues that might arise through either some type of hack environment. The sheer scalability of the cloud environments themselves makes certain types of cyber-attacks not really all that much of a threat just because of the endless scalability of those platforms.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Right. And also, the cloud providers, cybersecurity expertise too, I guess would be a factor in that as well. Right?
Gary Pulford:
Absolutely.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Eric, any last thoughts on this?
Eric Caddy:
Yeah, the scalable piece, it kind of ties to the resiliency, it's what we're talking about here with you know backups and restorations and those kinds of things, but you know for a long time in public safety, you know every time you start talking about the upgrade, the dreaded 3:00 AM upgrade time, it's nobody really enjoys doing. And I think the transition to the cloud just makes all of those types of things if architected in design, right. We'll put that caveat in that the ability to seamlessly upgrade behind the scenes without there really being any operational impact it's there if it's configured and set appropriately.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Makes a lot of sense. And actually, Eric, you've made the perfect segue to the next topic question. And I'd like to come to you first with this question. On a high level, what do public safety organizations need to do to leverage the cloud effectively? So maybe expand on your thoughts regarding architecture and design.
Eric Caddy:
Yeah, I think this one, you know it really comes down to, my first reaction to that question is, you know we often see situations where you know there's a new technology or a new application and everybody's kind of seeing it maybe at a trade show, or they're kind of hearing some buzzword about it. So, they get really enamored with that. And I think one of the first things that public safety organizations need to do when they start looking at cloud and thinking about that is making sure they have a good strategic plan in place for what does that look like for them and how that ties to their mission so that they're appropriately leveraging the cloud where it makes sense and where it can do things that we've been talking about here. It can save costs. It can offload some of the risks that you might be having. It can improve your resiliency and your restoration times and failures.
And there's a lot of benefits we've talked about here, but kind of taking the haphazard approach to that and kind of saying, "Oh, I'm going to move this application of the cloud or that application or this aspect of my operation." So, I think one of the first things is just making sure you've got a good strategic plan. And then I think that's going to kind of take you down the path of evaluating your current application providers, whether they be call handling or Next Generation 911 Core Service providers or CAD systems or RMS, really all of those things are applications at the end of the day. So, evaluating those application providers and getting a deeper understanding of how are they leveraging the cloud? Are they leveraging the cloud? Because I think what we're starting to see is vendors are starting to make a transition.
And from a public safety agency perspective, you need to be aware of that and be thinking about how does that impact your mission? You know where's your data going to be kept and housed, and stored? And you know how does that data long-term, what does that, do I have a strategy or a plan for that data long-term? So, these are all things that I think from a, I know you said high level, but I think the very first step is really assessing and understanding the cloud deployments that are impacting your agency and then having a plan for how you're going to effectively manage those things.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Thanks, Eric. So, the question is, what do public sector organizations have to do to leverage the cloud effectively? And Jamie, I'd like to come to you next for that question?
Jamie Sullivan:
Sure. Yeah, I think you know an organization isn't going to move everything to the cloud, certainly not all at once. Maybe over time, you will. But once you've identified the things Eric mentioned, you know your values of the applications that make sense for you. You can do it in a very methodical way. You can roll this out one piece at a time and take your time and do it right. And it'll gain you some confidence and maybe change your perspective on things, and you'll be a little more willing to do it next time with a different application. But I think a slow, steady rollout is a good way to do it.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Yeah, each time you do that, you get a little bit more confidence. You understand a little bit better how to do it. So, Gary, what are your thoughts?
Gary Pulford:
So, I concur with Eric on, you know, initially having a stated digital transformation strategy, how you're going to migrate to the cloud? What's your objectives? What are you trying to achieve? The piece after that, I would get engaged with the cloud providers that you want to work with and get their insights as to what's going on within the industry, what their peers are doing, as well as the vendor community, your applications, and understand what's you want to, what's going to reside within those applications and what are you going to have data elements or workloads that are going to reside outside those elements. And then how do you want to leverage those? So, what we see is a lot more data analytics, you know machine learning, a lot of insights that can be derived by moving these applications into, you know, cloud environments where you can you know, leverage the data across multiple applications and platforms and provide data-sharing across those applications.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
When should that due diligence occur? Does it happen when you're developing the technical specifications for our request for proposals, or does it happen before even that stage?
Gary Pulford:
I would say it happens well before that stage. I think you want to get insight from experts as to what you need to be thinking about if you're going to go down that path, those that have done it before and have the insight as to where the industry's going, where the technology's moving. So, before I laid out a plan, I would start getting engaged with those cloud providers and those application vendors to understand where their vision is and where they're trying to take, you know, the market.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
That makes a lot of sense. That's great advice. So, let's move on to the next topic question, which reads like this. Are there any myths or misconceptions regarding the benefits of cloud implementations? And Jamie, I wanted to start with you.
Jamie Sullivan:
Sure. Well, it's fast to deploy, it's secure, it's all those things, but it's perhaps not the best-supported environment. It depends on your agreements. You got to work through it. You've got to have some tight SLAs, that sort of thing, but you may find yourself in a sort of call center type support scenario as opposed to the guy down the road, a relationship with that can show up and be there to support you, right. You may not feel like you're getting the support you deserve if it's always somebody on the phone that may or may not know your environment. But again, you can probably work through that based on your agreements. You can require things like certain people, but certainly, support comes to mind with everything being up in the cloud in some data center across the country. You're less likely to have somebody that that person you've become so familiar with down the road helping you out. So, I'd be careful about that piece.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
That could be quite an adjustment when you're used to having a greater degree of control. Gary, what are your thoughts?
Gary Pulford:
I think a lot of it's psychological along the line with Jamie's comments. But its public safety has historically been, when my days have loosened, we referred to as box centers. They wanted to be able to touch that piece of equipment to be comfortable that it was going to operate properly. And I think it's a comfort level that people are gaining now and over time that the cloud environment is probably as reliable as the environment, they would have sitting in their small data center within their department.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Makes a lot of sense. Eric, what do you think?
Eric Caddy:
Hey, you know it's interesting that the psychological piece or you know the, I think there's some fear or just you know just some lack of knowledge and understanding because if you think about you know my public safety data now in the cloud and who has accessed them, where is it? And we hear about things like different regions and zones. So, I'm an agency, and I'm here, but my data center is half the country away. And man, it's going to be a slow delivery.
And there's these kinds of myths that I think are out there. And I think it's pretty fascinating to me if I think about it because you know if you back up a step and you think about cloud technology at a bigger scale, not just public safety, all of us rely on, all of us use banking applications, your banking information is sitting out in the cloud. Where do you think it's sitting? It's sitting in the cloud. Your health data that's being circulated in your regional health system is all sitting in the cloud.
And so, from a security standpoint, I mean there are other industries that have shown it is secure and reliable. I think, again, it goes back to kind of Gary brought up a good point earlier in the conversation. It's about getting engaged and understanding the technology at a better level, working with people who understand the technology and can help dispel some of those myths and allay some of that fear because I think there is some of that going on. And it's really important to get beyond that to understand the value and benefit you might receive from using this technology.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
I think those are excellent points to bring up. Thank you. So, the next question concerns the individual sectors that we think about when we talk about public sector organizations, and that would be law enforcement, fire rescue, emergency medical, 911, and then the justice and corrections sector. Which of these, if any, are better suited to a cloud migration and why? And Gary, I'd like to start with you.
Gary Pulford:
From my perspective, I think they're all suitable to move to a cloud environment. It's, there's a lot of things you need to consider from a how are you going to move data, data privacy, data access, which is the core behind a lot of these applications is that data. I think if you have a good strategy on how you want to approach it and you understand some of your data privacy issues and access requirements and availability requirements, I think any one of these is no more conducive to moving to the cloud before another one.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Okay. So, does it matter whether it's the size of the organization or the type of data that they are dealing with or the volume of data that they're dealing with, or are any of those factors in this?
Gary Pulford:
From my experience in cloud environments, none of those are really a factor. How long it's going to implement, how long it's going to migrate, those are bigger issues of the other pieces. Are your application vendors ready to actually move with you is going to be your biggest constraint?
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Yeah, that makes sense. Eric, what do you think?
Eric Caddy:
Yeah, I fully agree with Gary here. I think any of these individual sectors if you will, can benefit from the cloud and the use of the technology. I think a couple of things that have been mentioned that are important to understand it's about having a strategy, as Gary mentioned and a plan. You know, you need to think about what constraints you might have on an application. So, connectivity becomes critical. So, without connectivity to the cloud or with risky connectivity, you know your application may not always have access to the cloud. So having that secondary or tertiary network to support the connectivity seamlessly is critical.
And then latency. So, if you have an application that is time-sensitive in the data exchange between the application that's hosted in the cloud and your end user in your PSAP and the one that comes to mind right away is CAD, there's a latency aspect to CAD entries. It's very high-volume communication. So, if you're trying to host a CAD application in the cloud and there are companies that are doing that, but that's probably one aspect you need to understand is the latency factor and how quickly do you need the data exchange. As far as data storage, as Gary said, it's scalable. I don't see any limitations to those kinds of things. Those are the two that come to mind for me is connectivity and latency.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Thank you, Eric. I'm going to stay with you for our final question, which is, are there any disadvantages associated with cloud implementations?
Eric Caddy:
Glenn, that's a really interesting question. I personally don't believe there are disadvantages. And we talked a lot about the benefits of cloud today, and through discussion, we've highlighted you know the importance of having an understanding of what your constraints or your strategy might be. And I think it really comes down to that. I don't really see it as a disadvantage. I see it as you having an understanding of what your agency objectives and mission are and then leveraging the technology that's available to you in a way that makes sense and the way that supports what you're trying to do.
You know, the disadvantage, the one will be, and I just mentioned it, is the connectivity. I don't really think that's not necessarily a disadvantage. It's a constraint that you need to mitigate through the use of. You know I mentioned it, there are providers that provide a multi-tenant network connectivity solution that are out there or having a diversion path. It's really important to understand what your connectivity looks like because you know you may be thinking you're all different networks, but if those fiber connections, for example, happen to be in the same conduit, right. There's still the risk of some disruptive activity severing the conduit, maybe that holds two different fiber connections in the same pathway. So, you really got to understand that connection to the cloud. Not a disadvantage. It's just you have to understand and be knowledgeable about how you're connecting.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Thanks, Eric. Jamie, I'm going to come to you next. Do you agree with Eric that there really are no disadvantages? Just a big pile of considerations that have to be navigated through.
Jamie Sullivan:
Yeah. For the most part, yeah. I mean, if control is a big one for you. If you need to put your hands on equipment in the back room, you know that's going to be a disadvantage for you. But again, more of a constraint, more of a psychological thing that people are having to deal with, but no, by and large, I think Eric got it.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Yeah, I do too. But Gary, let's get your final thoughts on this question.
Gary Pulford:
Yeah, I don't see many disadvantages. I see a lot of the advantages. Some we've talked about. We haven't talked about like certification of like a FedRAMP type environment where you know you're going into an infrastructure environment that has passed and has been certified from a security framework standpoint. You know you get to take advantage of innovation when you're moving into the cloud. There's such rapid innovation going on in cloud compute environments that you can take advantage of scalability, resiliency. So, I see a lot of advantages, but once again, it all gets back to what is your objective, what's your plan, and what's your strategy.
Glenn Bischoff (host):
Makes perfect sense. So, unfortunately, we have reached the end of our time together. I'd like to thank you, the viewer, for carving out some time today to listen to this podcast. I am certain that you are walking away with some excellent advice and perspectives. I would like to very much thank my colleagues, Eric Caddy, Gary Pulford, and Jamie Sullivan, for also joining us today. Guys, you were great. Thank you. And I will wrap up just by wishing everybody a great rest of the day and hope to see you again soon on the MCP Podcast Network.
Announcer:
Mission Critical Partners is a leading provider of data consulting, information technology, and cybersecurity solutions that are transforming segmented mission-critical networks and systems into interwoven communications ecosystems. Our vision is to improve emergency response and justice outcomes in the ever-expanding markets we serve. Learn more about MCP and subscribe to the MCP Podcast Network at missioncriticalpartners.com.
