Cloud Computing

Public sector agencies and institutions of higher education are leveraging the cloud to achieve cost savings, improve efficiency, and meet federal mandates such as the Cloud First and Cloud Smart policies as well as the Modernizing Government Technology Act (MGT-A). For some agencies cloud computing helped them achieve greater efficiencies, effectiveness and scalability than previously enjoyed. However cloud computing is often a challenging technology to conceptualize — much less architect and deploy — and the same solution doesn't work for every organization.

DLT's Cloud Solutions team understands the public sector challenges involved with implementing cloud solutions, We have built an ecosystem of strategic partners including the leading Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Cloud Management vendors coupled with the most cloud adept consulting firms, value added resellers, and federal systems integrators to provide our customers with a simplified path to the cloud. Our experienced network has the deep knowledge and expertise required to architect, deliver, secure and manage a cloud solution that fits each organization’s unique needs.

Secure Application Hosting

With traditional IT models, physical infrastructure must be built and maintained in order to run on–premises applications. By leveraging the flexibility and agility of the cloud, organizations of all sizes are enjoying lower costs and simplified infrastructure management. Through our partnerships with leading cloud vendors, our Cloud Solutions team provides organizations with access to a myriad of reliable, scalable, and flexible computing resources on which applications can be hosted and deployed.

Deploy your existing applications - in some cases even leveraging your existing licenses - or new applications, securely and cost-effectively with our cloud solutions.

Benefits:

• Reduced Costs - Save money and avoid up-front capital expenses by paying only for the resources used
• Unlimited Scalability - Automatically add thousands of virtual machines and seamlessly scale to handle virtually any number of users
• Flexibility - Take advantage of an open and flexible platform that allows users to move data in and out any time; run, deploy and maintain apps
• Enhanced Security - Leverage a secure, durable platform with industry-recognized certifications and audits such as FISMA Moderate, HIPAA and ITAR–compliant controls

Rapid Application Development & Testing

Traditional software development processes are often time consuming and costly, requiring physical hardware and software that can drive development cycles to an average of three and a half years. The power of the cloud can eliminate these scalability, availability, and procurement challenges for public sector and higher education customers, and jumpstart application deployment timelines by over 30%. CODEvolved is a private Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering, brought to you by DLT, that empowers developers to focus on coding new application services while providing IT operations teams with a flexible, highly available infrastructure platform. CODEvolved delivers Red Hat’s OpenShift Enterprise private PaaS, running on Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure, for an elastic, fully configured environment for application development. Through CODEvolved, application developers can code, test, and deploy their applications in a robust environment without the need to wait for operations staff to provision resources. Operations staff can also leverage the flexibility of the AWS cloud to provide resources to developers in their desired manner.

Benefits:

• No Up-front Capital Investment - Thanks to the use of subscriptions for both Red Hat and AWS components, organizations only pay for consumed resources
• Scalability - IT operations teams and developers can provision resources as needed, allowing the ability to expand and contract capacity to match application workloads
• Decreased Lag Time - Provision complete and configured resource stacks on demand, allowing teams to experiment more quickly and more frequently
• Familiar Programming Languages & Tools - Use languages and tools you already know and trust including Web Console, Ruby, PHP, Python, Perl, and more
• Operational Speed & Agility - IT operations teams can provision and configure servers as needed without having to wrestle with deploying one virtual server per application component
• Reduced Waste - Use what you need, when you need it, and release unused resources that can be reused by other development teams

Large-Scale Processing & Scalable Storage

Since most everything generates data, maintaining physical infrastructure to keep up with unpredictable and ever growing demand can be costly and complex. Leveraging cloud infrastructure for large-scale processing and storage needs can help agencies and organizations of all sizes reduce costs and improve efficiency through low-cost, pay-as-you-go pricing models that match utilization needs. DLT also offers our public sector and higher education customers a unique hybrid solution that leverages Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure with the enterprise benefits of private storage in a colocation facility. DLT Private Storage for AWS delivers major cloud benefits like significant cost savings, increased agility using a mix of on-premises and cloud resources, and satisfaction of regulatory requirements. For budget-conscious agencies, the storage component can also be delivered as Storage-as-a-Service, a secure, on-premises solution with a variable, pay-as-you-go cloud-like pricing option that requires zero capital investment.

Benefits:

• Ease of Use - Launch the resources you need within minutes and enjoy the benefits of automatic provisioning, setup and configuration
• Elasticity - Add, expire, and delete any amount of data, quickly and easily
• Scalability - Easily scale capacity up and down to meet demand

Cost-Efficient Backup & Disaster Recovery

Most agencies and organizations rely on physical infrastructure for disaster recovery, backup and archiving. Moving these activities into the cloud, not only reduces costs, but enables faster recovery of critical IT systems. Cloud backup allows storage and retrieval of any amount of data, at any time, all while only paying for the services used. Through our partnership with Amazon Web Services and Symantec, DLT offers public sector customers access to innovative storage and services solutions that take disaster recovery and backup capabilities to the next level.

Benefits:

• No Tape - Eliminate costs associated with transporting, storing and retrieving tape media and backup software
• Elasticity - Add, expire and delete any amount of data, quickly and easily
• Security - Store your data on a secure and durable technology platform with industry-recognized certifications and audits

Mobility & Unified Collaboration

Today’s workforce is becoming increasingly mobile. To meet the needs of employees and constituents alike, agencies and organizations across the public sector are looking for better ways to connect and get work done from anywhere on any device. Through our partnerships with Google and Oracle, we provide cloud-based collaboration and productivity tools and services that can help users work smarter, deliver better, and focus on what really matters – the mission.

Benefits:

• Connectivity - Access the resources you need and work securely, no matter where you are or what device you’re on
• Collaboration - Work faster and smarter by collaborating across teams, agencies and locations seamlessly
• Low Maintenance - Manage infrastructure from a single interface and spend less time worrying about your IT infrastructure
• Security - Leverage secure platforms that are specifically designed to keep data safe, secure and in control

Data Mobility

To gain full value from enterprise data, whether it resides in the cloud or on-premises, your organization must be able to access, integrate, and trust them. We provide the most effective, comprehensive, unified, open, and economical cloud data integration solution.

Benefits:

• Data migration - Easily migrate data to and from the cloud. Should your Agency or team merge with another, Cloud Data Integration allows you to efficiently migrate and merge data quickly to start working towards achieving your mission.
• Data Archiving - Agencies must retain data for long periods, sometimes up to 10 years.  Inactive data from enterprise applications, such as Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel, SAP, and other custom applications and databases can easily be archived to on-premises or cloud storage.
• Legacy Application Retirement - Many agencies spend a significant amount of their IT budget maintaining legacy applications which have depreciated in business value.  The data in these legacy applications can be retired to on-premises or cloud storage, and yet remain easily accessible for reporting or compliance audit purposes.

Content Delivery & DdoS Protection

Whether an organization needs to deliver constituent services on the Internet, provide critical information during a crisis, or simply expand the reach, capacity, and performance of a website, DLT provides flawless experience under any condition. We are able to achieve this with the leading cloud platform for delivering secure, high-performing user experiences to any device, anywhere, reaching globally and delivering locally Our solutions are trusted by higher education institutions, branches of the US military, 14 out of 15 cabinet-level agencies, state and local government agencies, and many non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Benefits:

• Identify, absorb and block security threats
• Provide instant device-level detection and optimization
• Make decisions based on comprehensive knowledge of network conditions
• Present unprecedented business and technical insights

Skills Management

The Oracle Taleo Cloud Service enables agencies and midsize departments to recruit top performers, aligning them to key goals and performance while developing and compensating them appropriately. The industry's broadest cloud-based talent management platform, Oracle Taleo Cloud Service collects relevant information throughout the employee's entire life cycle, empowering HR, managers, and employees to leverage their cloud talent to drive improved performance and business success.

Benefits:                           

• Focus on process to reduce your recruiting costs
• Streamline the onboarding process and empower new employees with resources they need to be successful
• Continuously improve talent acquisition efficiency and effectiveness

Service Center Delivery

Maintaining a keen focus on your organization’s initiatives while monitoring and administering software applications can be challenging. DLT offers cloud management solutions with high-quality service delivery, optimal cost, and a flexible resource model to build, manage, and run your cloud environment more efficiently.

Benefits:                                                                    

• Define Configured Services - Deliver fully configured services, not bits of infrastructure
• Consistency - Keep visibility and control over what’s happening in the cloud
• Optimize your Monitoring and Management Processes - Utilize right-size capacity tools to run a reliable production cloud along with traditional IT
• Accurately Forecast - Measure your usage and enable chargeback for cloud services

Social Media Intelligence

Oracle RightNow Cloud Service helps agencies and higher education institutions deliver exceptional customer experiences across call centers, the Web and social networks. Oracle is moving aggressively to offer a full range of Cloud Solutions including human resources, social networking, databases and Java as part of the Oracle Public Cloud. Together, Oracle and RightNow can enable a superior customer experience at every contact and across every channel.

Benefits:

• Deliver the most advanced and comprehensive Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering.
• Offer an exceptional experience across the Web, social networks and contact centers.
• Improve the quality and consistency of experience across channels, reduce response times and lower operational costs

Launched in 2011, DLT Cloud Navigator allows DLT’s partner community to leverage a comprehensive range of cloud-based capabilities to support their business transformation:

• Account Management, Cost Optimization and Billing Support
• Marketplace support
• Partner Sales & Marketing Cloud Support
• Broad portfolio of partner accessible public sector cloud contracts
• 24x7 US Citizen, US Soil ITAR and GovCloud technical support
• Access to hundreds of thousands of cloud prospects
• Business strategy and cloud transformation support
• Specialized training
   

As the only public sector distribution partner to achieve both Public Sector and Education competencies, DLT has the added benefit of accelerating the growth of our partners across all aspects of the public sector landscape.

Customers and partners can find AWS available through many cloud based contracts including GSA Schedule, NASA SEWP V, NIH CIO-CS, NASPO ValuePoint, US Communities, Internet2 and many more.

To find out more about how DLT can accelerate your cloud business, please call 1-800-262-4DLT.

DLT’s role doesn’t end at the sale. Together with our partners, DLT aids customers in designing, implementing, securing, and managing cloud environments that specifically meet customer needs — no matter how small or large the project. With our partners, we offer a 24x7x365, U.S.-soil based, ITAR compliant Service Center to support complex case resolution, as well as proactive managed services, training, and consulting.

CONSULTING

Our team of solution architects and engineers along with our partners are here to advise, train and mentor you on the most suitable path to the cloud. We will assess your existing on premise infrastructure, meet with you to better understand your business and technical objectives, and develop a proof of concept for your specific use case. And, if you’re not sure exactly what to move to the cloud – we can help with that too. Our experts can help identify problem areas within your existing environment and suggest suitable use cases for leveraging cloud technologies.

IMPLEMENTATION

Once you’ve chosen a solution, we promise to have you quickly up and running in the cloud. DLT and its partners maintain a diverse and deep library of design patterns to jump-start your application or systems into the cloud. These unique blueprints include design, installation, configuration, and training. Our alignment to the "infrastructure as code" methodology is designed to help both business and technical users become cloud-ready as quickly as possible by addressing all aspects of cloud computing in a documented, organized, and easy to digest manner.

DLT’s ecosystem partners can provide the AWS expertise in support of your engineering team to quickly stand up your AWS infrastructure — leveraging AWS best practices — so your application team can get to work.

DLT and its channel partners often provide these services to Federal System Integrators who desire to bolster their technical teams with DLT’s AWS specialists.

MANAGED SERVICES

DLT Managed Service offerings provide our AWS customers with the ability to rapidly procure IT services, scale up or down as needed and release when finished, resulting in the perfect mix of cost savings, improved service deliverability, and increased productivity for your agency. This unique service supports the entire life cycle of services for the AWS platform. From design and implementation to management and support, we offer a unique “train-mentor-deliver” approach that guarantees rapid customer adoption and maximum self-efficiency.

DLT also provides our AWS customers with ongoing managed services after implementation, including support, monitoring, and maintenance, to ensure continuity and consistency within your cloud environment.

Learn more about our complete managed services offerings.

Deployment Models

Public Cloud

In this deployment model, cloud infrastructure is available to the general public and is owned by the organization providing the cloud services (for example Amazon Web Services). For public clouds, it doesn’t matter who owns, manages or operates it, so long as it is open to the public.

Private Cloud

In this deployment model, cloud infrastructure is provisioned for exclusive use by a single organization and can exist either as on-premises or off-premise. Private clouds can also be operated internally or externally (for example AWS GovCloud). Private clouds may be owned, managed and operated by a government organization, a private company, or a combination of the two.

Hybrid Cloud

In this deployment model, two or more cloud infrastructures (public, private or community) are leveraged and bound together by software or technologies that allow workloads to be moved back and forth between each type of cloud. For example, you keep most of your data in your private cloud, but you can easily tap into the AWS cloud to take advantage of extra storage or computing capacity when needed.

Service Models

For public sector agencies, no two clouds are alike. Some agencies are looking to leverage the agility, flexibility and on-demand access of a virtual data center, while others are seeking a more cost-effective way to deliver applications to their employees and constituents. DLT offers three main service models and four deployment models: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), as well as Public, Private, Hybrid and Community cloud deployment models.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service

The best way to think of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is as a virtualized data center. In the past, acquiring compute or storage capabilities required a lengthy procurement process followed by unboxing, racking and installing new hardware. Now, with a few clicks on a web page, users can dynamically provision virtual versions of traditional IT infrastructure. With IaaS, users are still required to manage everything above the hypervisor, including the operating system, application and any virtual appliances. The benefits of IaaS include agility, flexibility and on-demand access.

Partners: AWS, Akamai, Red Hat, Oracle

Software-as-a-Service

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) allows users to access and utilize third-party applications, such as e-mail and collaboration tools, that run on a provider-managed cloud infrastructure. For an easy example, think of it as a Gmail™ account or streaming music over iCloud™. Simply, SaaS delivers access to software over the Internet and eliminates the need to install and run actual applications on a user’s computer. With SaaS, the service provider is responsible for taking care of the application, operating systems and hardware components – simply procure the functionality users need, provision it immediately, and start using it remotely via a web browser.

Platform-as-a-Service

Of all the models, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is often the most complicated to understand. Simply put, PaaS offerings facilitate the deployment of applications without the cost and complexity of buying and managing hardware and software. PaaS allows users to deploy applications onto a provider-managed cloud infrastructure using programming languages, tools and facilities maintained by that provider. PaaS offerings may include facilities for application design, development, testing, deployment and hosting. The benefits of PaaS include increased productivity, faster time-to-deployment, no upfront capital expenditures and increased flexibility and agility.

For more information, call 1-800-262-4DLT or email cloud@dlt.com.