5/27/22
Platform (Infrastructure)
Accepted
The Spotlight Platform will be designed with cloud services in mind but should be able to be deployed locally if needed.
Both Cloud and On-Premises infrastructure were considered for use. Cloud infrastructure is agile and quickly adaptable, but will require knowledge of the chosen Cloud platform for the implementation teams. On-Premises infrastructure can provide some reassurance knowing that your servers are right down the hall. However that comes with the challenges of having 24/7 staff to maintain servers, network hardware and other physical facilities. Additionally, getting new hardware in a timely manner could pose challenges, if the need to scale up comes more quickly than expected.
- Limited staff at Diversity Cyber Council: Not knowing the size of IT staff at the Diversity Cyber Council, it seems prudent to not add the need for network engineers, server teams, server rooms and other infrastructure related expenses.
- Need to for systems to scale: The spotlight platform has the potential for exponential growth in users. That will require infrastructure that can scale quickly and easily.
- Solution Architecture: The solution design has many features that can benefit greatly from managed services that cloud providers offer, as opposed to running the applications necessary to support those features on a local system.
Approve the use of Cloud based infrastructure
- Cloud implementations can grow quickly. Care will need to be taken to ensure that costs do not outpace funding for the project.
- Reduced level of management and maintenance
- Reduced initial cost for hardware and software
- Increased ability to elastically match workload