Accelerating digital transformation in aging and long-established government verticals creates distinctive challenges, according to solutions provider Leidos Inc. — not least that the agencies tend to be working in a heterogeneous environment. That is unlike an entrepreneurial-oriented, cloud-first startup, for example.

Yet, the government operators want and need to embrace cloud, partly because of the massive volumes of new data that the digitization of their often-special platforms creates.

“You have cloud, you have on-premise infrastructure, you have edge devices, internet of things devices,” said Derrick Pledger (pictured, right), vice president and director of digital modernization at Leidos. “It’s very difficult to do management and orchestration over all these different devices.”

Pledger and David Chou (pictured, left), director of cloud capabilities at the Leidos, spoke with Lisa Martin, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during AWS re:Invent. They discussed government digital modernization and how to approach it. (* Disclosure below.)

API and the edge

One approach that Leidos takes in combining cloud and data strategy is API-based. Chou references telco API Twilio as a perfect example: Twilio is API-first, and it cleverly combines old tech — namely the conceivably dinosaur telephone — with new cloud.

“That is really the unique approach that Leidos has taken with our customers,” Chou said. “We [came] up with a custom strategy and a roadmap for them to adopt without deprecating any old capabilities they currently have, extending it out into the cloud.”

Moving as much capability to the edge as possible is another tactic.

“For us to be able to make an impact in near real time, [utilizing the edge is] what we need to do across all of our verticals,” Pledger says. “Not just DoD, but on the healthcare side too.

Legacy systems aren’t just turned off, Pledger added. “What we can do is figure out how to extend this capability to get to a mission need and build microservices [around it],” he added.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: AWS Public Sector sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither AWS nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE