Establishing a Future-Agile Framework

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As the Florida Division of Telecommunications (DivTel) plans the future My Florida Network (MFN), it is important to consider macro trends that are occurring within many states as well as within the broader technological and economic environment. The growth and continued aging of the population will put pressure on both the demand for services, and the ability to find skilled resources, such as network and security engineers. Increasingly, these demographic trends make it difficult for state and local agencies to identify critical networking and cybersecurity resources. Another trend that shows no sign of abating

is the increasing number of weather events and their severity levels. Finally, states are also facing a trend of increased risk of cybersecurity attacks, which will affect individuals, businesses, and the government.

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Based on these trends, Verizon has developed a series of ideas to consider. Beyond looking to “mitigate” the impact of these broad trends, the intent of the following recommendations is to help states like Florida achieve their short- and long-term goals in service to their citizens.

These three recommendations each provide a path and a vision for Florida to continue its leadership as one of the most innovative states in the US:

• Establish a future-agile framework that provides
  a state-wide, standardized solution and empowers agency-level customization

• Offer a more secure productivity environment for state professionals

• Migrate to a hybrid multi-cloud solution

  Our goal is to help states create a network environment that supports flexible connectivity between cloud environments, improves network security, and leverages the latest technologies and automation capabilities— while also serving as a platform for future growth

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1. Establish a future-agile framework

To better serve its constituents, Florida should consider achieving a good balance between the Department of Management Services’ (DMS) need for standardization and each agency’s need for customizability. Set in the context of Florida’s computing structure, this recommendation would give the state the ability to leverage, build upon, and implement a hybrid-cloud environment.

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To meet this challenge, we recommend that Florida implement a standardized network system at the state level to establish a single provider, unified backbone for all agencies that consume state networking resources. Within this standardized framework, Florida could allow for solution customization to meet the mission of individual Agencies. Standard services will benefit the state by providing a framework for state network operations going forward. Establishing a Florida-standard framework at

the top level can still give the state the ability to offer different levels of customization to different agencies and groups. Under a cloud computing model, Florida can offer both non-custom network solutions for Agencies where required, while at the same time establishing an environment that supports agency-level application customization where appropriate.

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This approach facilitates future technology migrations, while supporting agency customization requirements, by creating a future-agile framework. Future agility is critical. The need to deploy solutions that provide the agility to accommodate future changes is critical. To take advantage of new technologies, institutions need solutions that can accommodate change quickly, efficiently, and inexpensively.

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Establishing a governance model would further support the framework by determining which elements must be standardized and which applications can be customized to better meet requirements. This model would allow the state to better support downstream applications and their use cases, while maximizing individual agencies’ ability to customize their solutions. For example, Florida could offer a centrally deployed and managed Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) solution, while allowing smaller agency sites to opt out of SD-WAN services, and only deploy a single-circuit solution to better serve their needs.

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With the added benefit of procuring a single provider for its network backbone, and multiple vendors for its edge services, the state of Florida would benefit from improved scalability, reliability, visibility, manageability, security, cost-effectiveness and resiliency.

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2. Secure the productivity environment

Organizations are facing a trend of rapidly increasing security threats and breaches. We recommend the state adopt several new security technologies and services that not only offer new levels of protection, but additional benefits and capabilities. When paired with the hybrid multi-cloud solution proposed in the Recommendation 3 below, the solution enables improved visibility into security threats and network status, better and more actionable information about solution tools and how personnel are using them, and more flexibility to quickly and easily upgrade security infrastructure as new services become available.

Key actions the state can take to improve its security posture include:

• ImplementingaCloudAccessSecurityBroker(CASB) • Building a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
• Deploying an Extended Detection and Response (XDR) • Actualizing Network Visualization

• Improving security through a Secure Hybrid Network component

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3. Migrate to a hybrid multi-cloud solution

A hybrid multi-cloud solution mingles on-premises datacenter, private cloud and public cloud assets into a single, unified platform. This type of solution allows users to flexibly move connectivity between cloud environments at will (“any cloud, any time”), and connect to, and switch between, cloud resources more quickly than was previously possible. Moreover, this type of solution can be implemented in a structured “crawl, walk, run” model that allows the state to move forward at the pace that best suits its needs.

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This hybrid multi-cloud approach provides a number of benefits over traditional, dedicated data center solutions. Note our overall hybrid multi-cloud architecture supports a FISMA high connectivity framework for the state.

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The infrastructure needed to implement a hybrid cloud solution is best procured under a Network as a Service (NaaS) framework. NaaS helps customers modernize continually under an “as-a-service” model without having to constantly rip and replace equipment as technologies become obsolete, thus establishing future-agile telecom- munications services and allowing them to more quickly respond to changing needs and technologies.

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One key element of a NaaS solution is a Secure Hybrid Network, which simplifies operations and improves flexibility by providing adaptive public and private connectivity through a single hybrid port. Aggregating public and private connectivity through a single port provides a seamless and secure, transport-agnostic experience. Scalable, on-demand tools and services enable decisions and actions in real time. Predetermined routing with peered broadband and cloud providers ensure that first- and last-mile access links have low latency and consistent performance.

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A combined NaaS and hybrid muti-cloud solution would better enable the state to standardize critical network elements across the enterprise, while allowing agencies to customize some applications to better meet their needs. Moving to a hybrid cloud solution provides numerous benefits, including:

• Cost-effectiveapplicationmigration and management

• Enhancedsecurityposture

• Improvedresilienceandreliability

• Future-stateAIdeploymentcapabilities

• Cloud portability for workload mobility

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To further enhance the state’s networking flexibility
and allow it to experiment with different networking configurations without risk, we recommend implementing a digital virtual environment. Establishing a digital twin or digital virtual environment would allow the state to create a “perfect office” in digital form, which allows the state to treat fixes and changes to the network in a virtual “twin” environment. This turn would allow the state to change, evaluate and implement functions without risking negative impacts on production. It also allows the state to model network issues and outages, such as the impact of a disaster on the Florida network, or the impact of a router upgrade, router change, or other configuration.

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Verizon wants to support the state’s deployment of MFN3 and help it build and manage a successful network of the future. To achieve this, we recommend DMS strike the right balance between providing its customers a basket of services that are cost-effective, deliver value, and do not become stale over time. We believe that the way to achieve this is to adopt a framework that defines a set of core standards with a single backbone network, while also allowing for tailoring of solution elements and policies outside the core. Structuring the acquisition in a way that allows for multiple partners to participate in the tailored portions will provide the best way to ensure that offers do not become stagnant, and customers don’t seek alternative means of meeting their needs.

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For more information, please contact:

Debanie Montgomery, Sr. Client Partner debanie.montgomery@verizon.com 813-957-0947

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