The movement of applications to the cloud and increasing cyber threats mean that government IT departments need to re-evaluate their network infrastructure. These trends are driving the need to scale bandwidth, increase network flexibility and increase network security. However, these initiatives require funding and unfortunately, government IT budgets are not able to keep up. President Obama’s fiscal 2015 budget request to Congress slices $2.4 billion from the government’s current IT spending level. State and local governments will also suffer decreases in IT and support services.
Contrast that with IT spending in the private sector, which is predicted to increase to $3.8 trillion as technology companies continue to offer better services and interactions with their customers. So where do these opposing forces leave government? And how does government compete? Many government agencies at the state, local and federal levels are turning to network modernization to help satisfy the increased needs for more capacity, flexibility and heightened network protection while optimizing network cost efficiency and lowering expenses.
To further understand this issue and how organizations at all levels of government can take advantage of network modernization, GovLoop has partnered with Ciena, a provider of trusted, reliable and secure networking infrastructure to research networks, service providers, enterprise and the U.S. government, to create this research brief.
Together, we explore the benefits and challenges of IT modernization and what it means for agencies’ mission success. Specifically, this research brief will:
- Share results from a survey of 180 public sector professionals
- Explain how you can modernize your network to align to mission needs while complying with tight budgets and supporting legacy applications
- Provide a successful case study from Miami-Dade County’s network modernization
- Include expert commentary from Renee Reinke, senior adviser on industry marketing at Ciena
- Give you insight on how Ciena can help you adopt modern network solutions
Today, governments must think differently about their network infrastructure and how to modernize it. It is more critical than ever to implement the right infrastructure foundation to support the new application-driven world.
