The Mission of Virtualization, Defense Intelligence Agency, United States of America, Mike Mestrovish, Sr. Tech Officer for Innovation @ Citrix Synergy 2011
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Description
- Job is to look across IT spectrum and choose out applicable products for DIA mission
- Need to map IT strategic plan that maps to agency objectives
- Seized on virtualization a few years ago
- DS = Director for Info Systems, launched project to reinvest themselves a few years ago
- 50k customers across 200 countries, 14 major computing centers, 44k PCs, 12k thin clients, 16 separate networks, 37k secure VoIP phones
- Have built different networks for levels of classification of the data residing on those systems
- Now total 16 different networks, and 16 different versions of everything to support them
- Huge sprawl has been very costly
- Drove demand to find a different solution but allow the same security while reducing cost of owning these systems
- Very heavy consumer of video teleconferencing equipment
- IT Growth encountered (no timeframe given)
- Storage costs =500% growth biggest line item every year
- Agency growth +100%
- Data
- Data has changed, no longer text based, everyone wants to plot and chart data and track it through time
- People using the data have much greater insight, problem is they are drowning in data
- Challenge = right data, in right format to right analyst to be able to make right decision in right amount of time
Challenges
- Don’t fund IT as an activity, fund programs that need IT, very difficult to get LOB run rate
- Working to get enterprise wide financial management
- Don’t want to be break/fix partner, want to be mission support
- IT is the enabling capability is all missions, need to be able to bring IT to bear to enable more effective execution of missions (e.g. Bin Laden)
- Need to be able to deliver technology more rapidly, faster and more timely
- Have to stand up and down analytical cells to monitor situations as these world events happen
- Need to drive higher quality products, would prefer to have fewer higher quality products
IT Reinvention
- Period spanning 2009-2011, ends Oct this year
- Couldn’t continue to do business this way
- Goal was to modernize infrastructure
- Embarked in utilizing new technologies to leapfrog IT forward, there will be subsequent phases to this plan
- Long term goal it to get IT as a program of record…allows them to get specific line item for funding, a share of the budget
- Focus areas for reinvention…16 different programs
- Virtualization
- Next gen desktop
- Consolidate email from 14 systems to 1
- Standardize desktop OS’
- Refresh aging equipment
Next Gen Desktop
- Not necessarily about a desktop
- Need to allow customer to access 16 or more networks through 1 device, elimitates all separate cabling, switches and routers for each different network
- Replacing 12k thin clients by end of this year
- Need to mazimize virtualization use, desktop and application
- Need one solution for multi-domain access, keeps data from different networks separate
- Need to be able to run modern apps that customers want today and in the future…high def, multi-media, computationally intensive apps
- Thin client apps in past couldn’t run computationally intensive apps
- “one wire to the desktop”, feeds into gateway that ties into different networks, virtual DTs and apps are delivered in same way to thick clients and thin clients
- On Future of Desktop…Significant cases that we have when power of that chipset sitting on DT is really required to run that applications that you need
Business Drivers
- App virtualization
- Able to separate app from individual desktop, insurmountable leap forward on this alone for security accreditation
- Can move apps w/o security re-accredation
- App can run wherever it is pushed
- entralizes data to reduce management and support
- Reduces the need for security testing
- Reduces the need for integration testing
- Able to separate app from individual desktop, insurmountable leap forward on this alone for security accreditation
- Desktop virtualization
- Fewer desktop images/baselines
- Improves customer/mission availability
- Improved backup/recovery
- Reduces labor and time for updates
- Multi-security level device
- Access to multiple networks via a single device
New IT Landscape
- Will have mix of thin and thick clients
- Want backend IT to support user regardless of device
- Mobile is an important piece of this…need to enable mobile workforce
- Gov’t iPad currently is a “document reader”, all function has been stripped out of it
- want to get to real (vs extremely restricted) mobile device use and consumption
- Goal = able to move in and out of secure networks and facilities and be 100% assured that no data is ever resident on that platform or leaves that facility
- Need to be able to get users data that help them do their job
- Dynamic collaboration becoming more prevalent
- Set up very specific community of interest
- Enable them to move data around and collaborate, doesn’t require a separate network
- Need to be able to spin these environments down at end of mission
- Will be more involved in this environment today than ever before
- Only way to do this today is via virtualization
- Key = nothing resides on the computing device, hasn’t been possible in the past b/c risk of losing the data was too great
- Support multiple networks via single device
- Reduce time and labor to secure systems
- Agree with industry stats that 80% of budget spent on IT management
- Have to be able to reduce cost to sustain IT systems
- Free up capital to move into new markets and train
- Need to be able to deliver applications and services more rapidly
- In past could take more than a year to get an application through the accredation process, “we can’t operate that way anymore”