Welcome
Is Your Agency’s Multicloud Strategy Cloud Smart?
To ensure data security and avoid disrupting employee workflows as multicloud environments expand with new tools and resources, government agencies must shift their previously ad hoc multicloud strategies to being unified and cloud smart. How is your agency or organization navigating this transition? Take our short self-assessment to find out.
The assessment will yield customized results and recommendations based on your responses and should take no more than 6 minutes to complete.
Questions
Cloud Fundamentals Strategy
Please indicate the steps your agency is taking to transform the strategy for your cloud environment today and in two years. (Select all per column.)
Questions
Security
Please indicate your agreement with the following statements about your agency’s approach to information security and Zero Trust.
Questions
Personnel
Please indicate your agreement with the following statements about your agency’s approach to staffing and managing cloud personnel.
Questions
Process
Please indicate your agreement with the following statements about your agency’s approach to cloud processes.
Questions
Technology
Please indicate your agreement with the following statements about your agency’s approach to cloud technology.
Results Overview
To optimize your cloud landscape while accounting for security and employee agility, agency decision-makers need to: 1) understand how their strategies and resources rank against four competencies that bring their security posture closer to Zero Trust and 2) upgrade their internal cloud-related expertise and processes to being on the leading edge. Our assessment evaluates participants across four key disciplines:
Security
Does your security posture reflect a comprehensive understanding of data protection in the cloud? Does it include elements of a Zero Trust approach?
People
Does your current personnel strategy include plans to support increased cloud adoption, while protecting the productivity of employees and alignment between departments?
Process
Do your current processes effectively enable streamlined workflows for cloud-related personnel while ensuring compliance/governance?
Technology
Is your technology strategy centered around digital transformation and automation in a way that accounts for compliance and visibility across your applications and cloud environments?
Where is your agency today, and how can it be more cloud smart in the future? Continue to see your personal results and recommendations.
Recommendations
Follower
Intermediate
Leader
Your maturity result:
Your Cloud Computing Maturity Assessment Results
Maturity level 1 of 3: Follower
- What your results mean – Forrester defines three levels of cloud maturity: Follower, Intermediate, and Leader. Based on your responses, your organization is at the Follower maturity level.
- Start small and focus on strategic wins. Choose a single cloud if you’re early on in your cloud journey. If you choose to bring on multiple environments, be it on-premises or other clouds, be sure to use a hybrid cloud management to help with the development and implementation of governance policies, cost management and budgeting policies, and security policies. Keep this decision as one of the last steps you take, you’ll want to have a strong idea of how you want to implement your cloud strategy before making a big purchase in tooling. As you migrate your workloads from on-premises to other clouds, you’ll need to implement a Zero Trust framework that continually secures throughout the architecture, which is based on multiple criteria (user identity, device status, request context) and informed by continuous learning. When you build out your cloud team, there will be required training for those that are shifting from on-premises support roles. Ensure that you allow for training to occur during work hours and show support for their efforts by implementing this into their development plans.
Maturity level 2 of 3: Intermediate
- What your results mean – Forrester defines three levels of cloud maturity: Follower, Intermediate, and Leader. Based on your responses, your organization is at the Intermediate maturity level.
- Continue on your current implementation plans. By now you’ve chosen a hybrid cloud management tool, and you should have laid down your governance and security framework. Continue to evolve these policies. As you start to use cloud at scale, you’ll find that some policies may be overly complex or brittle. Don’t worry, this is common, build and evolve your polices to meet your growing needs. Your cloud team should be at or near the end of completing their first round of certifications. Your Zero Trust framework should be firmly implemented. Use your cloud management tools and third-party security tools to aid in the management of your environment. Your cloud team should be leaning on day-to-day work to gain experience. They should also focus on more Leader skills and certifications training as well, such as learning to code and understanding different automation tools that can be used to enhance management.
Maturity level 3 of 3: Leader
- What your results mean – Forrester defines three levels of cloud maturity: Follower, Intermediate, and Leader. Based on your responses, your organization is at the Leader maturity level.
- Maintain your strong management plans and look for optimization opportunities. Organizations that score in the Leader category are doing well on a wide range of cloud management areas. Cloud security coverage should be expanded to at least 90% of workloads. Firms should be using Zero Trust methodologies, which denies access to applications and data by default. Cloud security management should be unified across public, private, managed, and edge computing clouds to a single console. At this stage, your cloud team should be well-versed, thoroughly trained, and very experienced in managing a cloud environment.
- Look for areas to optimize your current implementation and ways to take up new and innovative technologies. Recheck your governance and security framework. Ensure that these policies are current and up to date and evolve them as necessary to reflect current business targets and needs. Your cloud usage should be at scale. There may be some policies implemented early on that no longer make sense for the business. Continually test, manage, and evolve these policies and frameworks. Your cloud team should be nearing expert level or at an intermediate level of knowledge for their roles. Revisit and ensure that you have the right skills and team members to achieve your evolving business targets. The organization should have an outstanding training and career development program in place for cloud skills, including formal cloud training programs
Next Steps
Read the research
Thank you for taking the time to complete this assessment! Click here to read the full Forrester report commissioned by VMware.
Ready to get started?
To learn more about multicloud and digital transformation for government, explore VMware’s government blogs.
View Your Detailed Results
Methodology And Disclaimer
Methodology And Disclaimers
Methodology
Methodology
In this study, Forrester conducted an online survey of 501 agency leaders and IT decision-makers at federal, state, and local governments in North America to evaluate cloud practices. The study began and was completed in March 2022.
Disclaimers
Although great care has been taken to ensure the accuracy and completeness of this assessment, VMware and Forrester are unable to accept any legal responsibility for any actions taken on the basis of the information contained herein.