While the largest of corporations sign onto the concept of cloud computing and data-driven analytics, governments are also wrestling with these issues, including the State of Louisiana. About four years ago, the State organized 16 federated groups into one large information technology organization. This included public safety, child and family services and hospitals, to name a few.

So how did Louisiana go about navigating the technological challenges this posed? Michael Allison (pictured, left), chief technology officer of the State of Louisiana, and Derek Williams (pictured, right), director of data center operations at the State, weighed in with their story and the challenges they faced.

“About four years ago, the Department of Health and Hospitals had a case where they needed to modernize their Medicaid Services eligibility and enrollment,” Allison described. “We gravitated to that project … and said, ‘Hey, why don’t we take what you’re asking us to build and build it in a way that we can expand throughout the enterprise to not only affect the Department of Health but also Children Family Services, and be able to command it to Department of Corrections, etc.?'”

Allison and Williams spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor), principal at The CTO Advisor, during the Nutanix NEXT US event in New Orleans. They discussed the challenges to bring IT into the 21st century through technological advances of cloud technology. (* Disclosure below.)

Challenges of merging government IT

There were many challenges along this journey, according to both Allison and Williams, starting with the introduction of a huge team of different IT silos to merge into one cohesive team.

“As you bring in 16 different IT organizations into one, having all those individuals now work together instead of apart and not in silence, that was probably one of the biggest challenges that we had over the last few years — really breaking down those cultural barriers and really coming together as one organization,” Allison said.

Williams agreed that the cultural aspect was the biggest part of the change, especially for smaller teams that had previously worked with more autonomy. “A lot of small and medium-sized IT shops could get away without … necessarily having the proper governance structures in place — and a lot of people wore a lot of hats,” he said. “So now we’re about 800 strong in the Office of Technology Services, and that means people are very aligned to what they do operationally.”

The team decided to use Nutanix for its cloud infrastructure, and they have created a roadmap for the future to expand further.

“[The goal is] multicloud if we can get to that state,” Williams said. “That is a huge gap for us right now. We have a highly available environment between two data centers where we run two setups active/active that are load balanced, so the piece we’re missing now is really an offsite [disaster recovery] that has that  complete integration.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Nutanix NEXT US event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Nutanix NEXT US event. Neither Nutanix Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE