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The Case for Multi-Cloud:
Paving the Path for Government Innovation
Daniel Kent
Lead Technologist for Public Sector, VMware
As the lead technologist for public sector at VMware, Daniel Kent helps customers transform their agencies with the power of cloud. Here, he discusses how he became interested in government technology, offers examples of agencies who have successfully built or leveraged a multi-cloud environment and shares best practices for how agencies can embark on their own cloud journey.
As a zoology major at the University of Maine, Daniel Kent had his eyes set on medical school. But when he graduated, he decided to join the military to do medical research in the nation’s capital — a pivot that would change his career dramatically over the next three decades.
At the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington, D.C., Kent focused not only on scientific research but was also tasked with figuring out how to use computer systems to upload and share research with other researchers. He put together an internet mail gateway in 1988, which ended up being his foray into IT.
A graduate degree in IT from the Johns Hopkins University helped cement Kent’s newfound passion and set him up for a career that would span more than 30 years.
Today, he’s the lead technologist for public sector at VMware, where he pulls from his experiences to drive innovation in the government sector and help customers transform their agencies with the power of cloud.
Kent was drawn to VMware for its leadership in technology in compute, network and endpoint security and virtualization as these advancements laid for future cloud platforms and automation tools. After three decades in the industry, Kent says these emerging solutions and methodologies are more relevant and impactful for business missions than ever before.
“You don’t think about it until you start understanding the use cases and how the world has changed because of technology,” he says. “It’s everything from changing the retail industry that we’re all very familiar with to changing how citizen services are delivered from the government.”
These changes are especially apparent to Kent, who oversees a customer portfolio of state, local and federal government, as well as education. Virtual learning and telehealth became a necessity during the pandemic. This transformation is possible largely because of the ubiquity of broadband and the applications being delivered from the cloud, he says.
Kent’s background also gives him a unique perspective on technological change.
“I started on the mission side, versus IT, and I can often see how technology can change the approach to the mission, and that’s the definition of digitization — leveraging the technology, to help people change their processes and how work gets done,” he says. “And that’s exciting.”
“I started on the mission side, versus IT, and I can often see how technology can change the approach to the mission, and that’s the definition of digitization — leveraging the technology, to help people change their processes and how work gets done. And that’s exciting.”
Daniel Kent, Lead Technologist for Public Sector, VMware
Accelerating Innovation
In his current role, Kent helps agencies on their cloud journeys and enables them to overcome common challenges of transformation, operational complexity and security requirements.
Chief information officers, for instance, must understand and maintain their current environment while preparing for the future state of technology, including multi-cloud environments. Considering how dramatically the digital landscape is changing, Kent helps customers to build a trusted digital foundation ready for today and tomorrow.
Operationally, agencies must manage existing legacy environments while adopting next-generation cloud-based environments, which requires a broader skillset. Kent helps customers find the tools to support both environments. And security remains top of mind as the threat landscape expands with innovation.
“I think everybody knows that security is top of mind for our customers and whether it’s because of the complexities they have to manage, or that they might have different security requirements in the new environment compared to the old environment,” he explains.
“You want to have the flexibility to use whatever specific capabilities you need across cloud providers to support agency needs. We believe this will be what drives government agencies and large enterprises to multi-cloud.”
Daniel Kent, Lead Technologist for Public Sector, VMware
A Secure, Multi-cloud Journey
Most agencies today have a hybrid cloud environment, using both private and public clouds. When more public clouds and providers are added to the hybrid cloud environment, it becomes a multi-cloud environment. This can add operational complexity, but also provides flexibility.
“Not all public cloud providers are created equal in terms of services or capabilities offered” Kent says. “You want to have the flexibility to use whatever specific capabilities you need across cloud providers to support agency needs. We believe this will be what drives government agencies and large enterprises to multi-cloud.”
When developing a multi-cloud strategy, Kent recommends first cutting down on complexities starting with standardizing methods and tools. For example, in the security stack, there shouldn’t be four different firewalls based on the CSP, or multiple analytics engines for traffic flow visibility. VMware can deliver common services across multiple cloud providers under one environment. These services include security, visibility, monitoring and orchestration tools. This allows for a common operating model among an agency’s cloud providers.
Security in cloud environments introduces different requirements than security in legacy private cloud architectures. Without a well thought out strategy, this can bring on more complexity and operational tools sprawl. VMware is helping government agencies with the tools and services to enable the multi-cloud journey to Zero Trust architecture.
“We look at the threat landscape . . . it’s massive,” Kent says, “So how do we secure that? We start with micro segmentation to narrow the field of threat and prevent east-west traffic from happening in the data center, in the cloud, or wherever your applications are located.”
If unusual activity is happening, VMware can help customers detect and manage threats with advanced cybersecurity fueled by embedded instrumentation, behavioral analytics and automation and configuration tools. This is especially important for unknown or zero-day threats, but also for misconfigurations and unknown vulnerabilities.
“These tools are all under our Zero Trust umbrella and are common and consistent across any cloud provider as well as the on-premises data center,” Kent says.
“Not all public cloud providers are created equal in terms of services or capabilities offered. You want to have the flexibility to use whatever specific capabilities you need across cloud providers to support agency needs.”
Daniel Kent, Lead Technologist for Public Sector, VMware
Transforming with Modern Applications
When Kent works with agencies looking to leverage cloud, he tells them to go in with “eyes wide open.”
Look holistically at what you are trying to achieve, what you have and where you want to go, he explains. Leverage a future-state architecture methodology, a smart approach to cloud.
Considering transformations in government can go on for years, Kent also builds in short wins by helping agencies reach certain milestones or add value for the end user.
“The idea of one-and-done, ‘I’ll be back in eighteen months with your new application,’ is gone,” he says. “That waterfall methodology had its day and today’s best practices follow agile methodologies, iterating on both the design and solution, as well as the customer’s strategy and end goal.”
Additionally, leveraging a microservice architecture, or cloud native, to build applications is dramatically different than the legacy approach. The iterative approach of continuous innovation, continuous development (CI/CD) in application development is an area where VMware helps government agencies. The Tanzu platform provides templates and tools to help agencies train staff and deliver modern applications in a multi-cloud world. This also includes building security into the pipeline and release process to secure software supply chain.
The U.S. Army’s Software Factory in Texas is just one example of a place where VMware is helping to put next-generation application development and multi-cloud environments to work, educating and training teams to write and deliver applications.
“It’s a really good use of our technology and how we can help customers build cloud native applications with speed and agility,” Kent says.
“What excites me is how we can take technology to field workers, and really help productivity and quality of life.”
Daniel Kent, Lead Technologist for Public Sector, VMware
Innovation at Work
“What excites me is how we can take technology to field workers, and really help productivity and quality of life,” Kent says.
VMware has long provided the digital foundation for public safety, health officials and educators — wherever they are located.
“We can deliver a mobile office in a secure manner with VMware Anywhere Workspace,” he says. “We see that need in the federal government, and in state and local agencies, and it really takes our technology all the way to the edge.”
In Clark County, Nevada, VMware helps provide field workers with the capabilities they need onsite through a three-year mobility plan.
The partnership provided the county’s Department of Health and Human Services caseworkers with devices they could bring when visiting citizens. Rather than trailing with pen and paper onsite and inputting all the data on their computers once back at headquarters, VMware helped the county implement secure, portable computers.
“We continuously monitor and assess systems ensuring device integrity. Based on the location or identity of the user, applications can be locked down, or force additional authentication (MFA) to ensure user integrity. Controlling access to all that data is our goal in remote environments,” Kent notes.
This productivity enhancement for the county allowed caseworkers to visit more families, homes and children in a day — while providing a better experience for the case workers.
“It only happens because of cloud — all these services and applications are delivered through the cloud, leveraging broadband and mobile devices,” Kent says.
Innovating for the Future
The work doesn’t stop there. In fact, Kent believes the future is multi-cloud. It’s why he’s so passionate about empowering a smart cloud approach within the public sector.
Indeed, it brings him back to why he joined VMware in the first place.
“I think you’re going to see agencies taking the journey to multi-cloud strategies as they innovate to build new services and resilience into their organizations. VMware is helping agencies unlock the potential of all clouds on their journey to digitization.”
Discover how VMware is helping the public sector take a holistic approach to multi-cloud, register for Public Sector Innovation Summit.
