Welcome to the Stagecoops Podcast series on IT Modernization in Government, under written this week by Verizon. I'm your host Wyatt Cash, and in today's episode, we're talking about how state and local leaders can think about the intersection between network and security modernization. Our guest today is Anthony Batista, Director of Solutions Architect for Verizon. Anthony has worked at Verizon for over 16 years, helping organizations integrate security, cloud, and network services into their infrastructure modernization programs.
Anthony, thank you so much for joining us, and welcome to the program. Thanks for having me, Wyatt. I'm glad to be here. So, Anthony, state and local agencies have been on an accelerated digital transformation journey over the past 18 or 19 months to meet constituents' needs.
And I think the question I'd like to start with is what are the most critical IT areas that agencies should focus on now to continue improving citizen engagement? That's a great question. And we definitely saw that same acceleration of digital transformation. So much so, Wyatt, that it stressed many agencies' core competencies and put them in a tough spot.
But they did well. They responded, and the architectures continued to change from a premises-based focus to an internet-based focus. And when that happens, applications become more network-dependent. And when they're more network-dependent, we find that there's four key pillars to focus on.
And these pillars allow us to focus in certain areas at certain times and make the best use of our resources. So, those areas are connectivity, security, visibility, and automation. And connectivity that we see is hybrid models. So, some internet, some public, some private, some wireless, some wired, in order to meet the constituents' needs who are now asking for new services that weren't there before.
So, the connectivity piece ties it together. Security, especially through this pandemic, really became front and center because now we had folks who were working from home, we had them in different locations, the attack vectors were changing, and we needed to get to a more active defense. So, we think that security is a big, big pillar of IT technologies that we want to stay on top of and if possible ahead of. And then visibility is one that's often overlooked, but the ability to see not only whether a connection is up or down, what you might define as a red or a green light, but what is the application doing?
How is the application performing? So, having the visibility and, more importantly, the tools to see into that network, to see from the cloud to the end user and back again, and then not getting hung up on the technical debt or the cost of many, many tools. So, how do I get the most efficient tools in that visibility space? And finally, automation.
We found that this accelerated digital transformation put us in a spot where maybe some of our agencies didn't have expertise. So, we find that, again, it's stress the machine, so to speak, and you have to be able to move quicker. And so, now we either stress the machine, need to move quicker, and then add a lack of human resource. Now, we need to get to some automation.
So, in the security space, for example, we see a lot of AI, ML to address incidents and really get us to true positives in terms of breaches and incidents. So, again, connectivity, security, visibility and automation for key areas that we see being critical IT areas to focus on. Well, Anthony, talk to us a little about your view on how the network ties in all the elements of a modern enterprise, and how can the network be used to also help break down traditional IT silos? Yeah, if we work that question in reverse, the breaking down of the silos is very key.
And so, over the years, we've seen the adoption of DevOps methodology. And so, now we're building applications with the understanding of how we're going to operate that application. And we've now extended that and seen the extension of it into Net DevOps, where the network is being added to that approach. And when one does that, the network then becomes the connective tissue between the run state and the Dev state.
And we begin to build into the applications themselves, the requirements of the network. Why is that important? Well, because agencies don't have a lot of money. Nobody has a lot of money, right?
So when we do Net DevOps, when we perform that, then we get the most efficient use of the network with the greatest end user experience. So as the network becomes a connectivity issue, what's coming across the network, the data? So the data in the network now allows an agency to get to a place where they become what we define as a real-time enterprise, taking all the data from their wireless networks, from their wired networks, maybe data that they've had and never used, but now we get to use it and act upon it and make decisions, and we can be more flexible, more agile, and more responsive to constituents. And that why it was a key that came across in COVID, that's what digital transformation is about.
I need to be faster, more agile, and in this way, the network now bridges the gaps from applications to network to security to operations. That makes a lot of sense. Next, let me ask about network architecture and how it's evolving. So how do agencies build security in versus bolting it on as their networks evolve, especially as agencies continue to expand to a more hybrid IT environment?
So the network architectures of today are changing in the sense of we are moving from traditional purpose-built technology platforms, meaning WAN edges and wireless lands. We're moving to a software-defined infrastructure, and as that happens, many of the original equipment manufacturers and service providers and other players in the ecosystems are beginning to put functions together. So this is where we see virtualized services come into play. So we software-defined a function, we're now able to move it and put it on any kind of compute platform there is, and at the same time, we can build multiple functions into a single instance.
So the advent of software-defined technology, virtualized services, that's a big architectural change that has also accelerated in the last couple of years, and we see that that change in architecture is now driving a change in thinking where it's no longer a box behind a box behind a box. It's a function next to a function or built together. And the perfect example of this is the secure access service edge, or what is defined in the industry as the SASE model, where you have your WAN edge and your security functionality built together in a way that they're interoperable and complementary and not a bolt-on. Why are managed and professional services also becoming more important to this process?
And where are you seeing noteworthy progress in the way state and local agencies are taking advantage of them to advance their modernization and security strategies? Yeah, the managed and professional services, if you will, it's a spectrum in my mind. It runs from fully outsourcing on the managed services side to point products, and why that's important is because what we've seen as speed requirements increase, and I just mentioned the change to a software-defined architecture, expertise is sometimes hard to find. So where we see managed services and professional services fitting is when one, an agency wants to go faster, two, when they want to build elasticity into their expertise model, and three, where they just don't have expertise.
And four, I could add that sometimes it's just easier and cheaper to out task certain elements of an operation to a managed services provider so that the limited resources that an agency does have can focus on the strategy and the future view and staying ahead of what the constituents need from them. So in that sense, we can fill multiple roles as partners in this ecosystem, and where we're seeing this manifest itself significantly, and this is very true since COVID, is in the area of incident response and investigation. And that is, as the architecture has changed, and the way I just mentioned as the connectivity has become more hybrid and more internet focused, the attack vectors are new and coming faster than ever. So I think the professional services related to incident response, as I've said, and then even the managed services of security, specifically, and network where you can combine those out tasking those elements has provided that speed and flexibility needed by our agency partners.
Well, you definitely make a compelling case for that. Lastly, what advice would you offer for identifying partnerships that can help state and local agencies not only address their network needs, but really keep pace with innovation? The pace with innovation, comment-wide, is great, right? Because today it's not nearly good enough to stay stationary.
If you're staying stationary, the old line is you're actually getting behind, right? The choosing of a partner is about, A, what are the core competencies that that partner has? Do they fit what you need? Are they a leader in that area?
And then, B, what other partnerships does that partner have? So kind of in a brokerage house model, I can go and get certain core competencies from partner A, and they can, in turn, be a force multiplier for me by going out and getting other services, piecing them together and making it easier for me as the agency, in terms of onboarding and vetting that partner and making your buying power even better, bringing all that together. That would be the ideal partner for me. So to illustrate the idea further of both innovation and partnership and where they come together, I'd like to just explain why a recent example of where Verizon worked with an agency for a contact center solution, where we gathered the business and technical requirements and looked to refresh what was in place to deliver against those business and technical requirements, and ended up in a place where we provided Verizon managed network services as a core competency, coupled with a leading innovative contact center solution and delivered on a complete, fully managed, turn-key solution.
And what was important there is our managed service competency allows us to take on the risk of running and maintaining the contact center, delivering the outcome, while that agency was then able to take its resources and focus on the next project, the next strategy and be forward-looking and yet still deliver what the constituents needed. All great points. Well, I'm afraid we're going to have to leave it there for today. Anthony Batista, thank you so much for joining us to talk about IT and network modernization in government.
Thanks. It was great to be here, Wayne. And thanks to Verizon for underwriting today's episode. Look for more of our IT modernization in government series on Statesgroup.com and our StateScoot podcast channels wherever you get your podcasts.
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