Public Sector CIOs: Why Are You Still Locked into Your Workload Venues?

Modernize Across Platforms with Ensono^® Flex^SM

Ensono’s public sector clients enjoy the freedom to modernize across platforms as needed with maximum flexibility and no penalties with Ensono Flex. This unique model allows states to adapt to meet changing business needs. State and local governments have embraced the cloud over the past decade and are seeing the benefits — cost savings, increased flexibility and improved citizen service. At the same time, they have realized not everything may belong in the cloud, leaving many managing hybrid environments of multiple public and private clouds, on-premises data centers and legacy systems.

As states continue their modernization, consolidation and transformation journeys, the choices they make for application venues become more complex. Choices that made sense 30, 10, and 5 years ago and maybe even last year, might not make sense now. And while more workloads migrate to the cloud, states are also realizing not everything belongs in the cloud, leaving many managing hybrid environments of multiple public and private clouds, on-premises data centers and legacy systems. Like most public sector entities, applications reside in a complicated web of multiple and overlapping venues, in both state-owned and -operated, with outsourced locations and providers. These far-reaching and continuously evolving hybrid estates, which were once an unintended consequence of IT evolution, are now the destination.

Where do your applications live now?

• Mainframe, yours or outsourced
• Data center, yours or outsourced
• Cloud
• Private Cloud
• SaaS and IaaS environments

As applications and technology evolve rapidly, states are moving more applications to the cloud to take advantage of the platform’s agility, flexibility and scalability. But states still need the mainframe to process the billions of secure transactions for essential government services and need the industrial strength processing power that only mainframe provides. As many states adopt a cloud first strategy, they continue to migrate legacy applications to the cloud.

Sometimes these results can be mixed. Some applications may not see heavy, regular use, and could be a good fit for full cloud implementation, while other, more heavily used applications could be a better fit for a hybrid model where they won’t incur large cloud utility fees. It’s not unusual to move a workload to the cloud and find it’s much more expensive to run than you expected. But if you choose to exit a cloud services agreement early, you will probably trigger expensive penalties. You might also be constrained by rigid IaaS contracts that don’t allow you to scale down your consumption, and you are charged for consumption you don’t need or use.

State Business Models Are Evolving

• 83% use an IT shared services model for some or all IT operations
• 74% outsource some IT apps and services
• 70% own and operate a consolidated data center
• 61% outsource some IT infrastructure services
• 50% use a managed services model for some or all IT operations

Source: NASCIO 2020 State CIO Survey

Ensono Flex: Your Insurance Policy for the Future

Ensono’s mission to be your relentless ally isn’t just a slogan; it’s a promise of partnership throughout a client’s entire IT journey. As a hybrid IT services provider, we stand behind this concept by incorporating Ensono Flex into every client contract. This flexibility gives your state more options with no financial penalty as you continue to evolve and refine your optimization, modernization and migration strategies and rethink your application venues.

Ensono Flex allows states to shift workloads across Ensono’s varied service platforms— for example, mainframes, distributed systems, data centers, and public and private cloud— during a contract term without financial penalty. This greater flexibility enables states to continue to drive transformation and meet changing business needs without fear of lock-in. “We aim to be a relentless ally for our clients, disrupting the status quo and unleashing them to do great things,” states Brian Klingbeil, Ensono’s Chief Strategy Officer. “Ensono is an intentionally built company that considers the full art of the possible. The tools and methods we will be using in 10 years will likely be unrecognizable when compared to today, but one thing that will remain constant will be a dedication to service, integrity and perpetual transformation.”

Ensono Can Help State and Local Government

• Mainframe as a Service (MFaaS) can provide immediate savings of 20%, enabling states to serve agencies and citizens faster and more efficiently, while reducing costs
• Shift workloads across platforms with Ensono Flex, providing maximum flexibility with no financial penalty in Ensono-managed platforms
• Avoid upfront transition costs on hosted mainframe services and infrastructure management to better manage budget and lower TCO

For more information view our Solutions That Appeal Guide and learn why software and licensing costs are eating up your budget in our Checklist.