Cloud Adoption and Understanding the Risks of Legacy Systems
Tyler Podcast Episode 92, Transcript
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Show Notes
On this episode of The Tyler Tech Podcast, Russell Gainford, Senior Vice President, Cloud Strategy & Operations at Tyler Technologies, explores the benefits of embracing the cloud while also delving into the risks posed by legacy systems. From practical strategies to best practices, Russell offers a roadmap for navigating the complexities of a modern IT infrastructure.
We also look ahead to Connect 2024, which will be in Indianapolis, Indiana from May 19th to May 22nd. Registration is now open at: www.tylertech.com/connect
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Transcript
Russell Gainford: What you can't have happen is you can't say, I'm going to go decide I think we should move everything to the cloud and not have a strategy for how you're going to get there. And that's where communicating with leadership comes in, because it's more than I want to move my one solution to the cloud, and now, oh, by the way, I didn't realize that was integrated to two of my other solutions. Now if that one goes, you have to have a plan that you're going to get everything to where you want it to be, but you're going to do it in a way that's not going to disrupt the citizen and your staff on the daily job that they're doing.
Josh Henderson: From Tyler Technologies, it's The Tyler Tech Podcast, your source for insightful conversations with thought leaders addressing the pressing issues in our communities. I'm Josh Henderson, and I'm on the corporate marketing team here at Tyler. Thanks for joining us.
In each episode, we dive into the essential topics shaping our society and shed light on the individuals, places, and technologies empowering the public sector. If you like what you hear, please consider giving us a five-star rating and review, subscribing on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and recommending the show to others.
On today's episode, we're joined by Tyler's Senior Vice President of Cloud Strategy and Operations, Russell Gainford.
Throughout the discussion, Russell defines best practices for cloud development, operations, and deployment, and outlines the risks of delaying technology modernization.
With a focus on practicality and efficiency, Russell's insights provide a roadmap for success in an increasingly digital world. And for additional insights and helpful tips, be sure to check out Russell's white paper, ‘Is Your Legacy Digital Infrastructure Putting You at Risk,’ at the link in our show notes. We hope you enjoy the episode.
Alright, Russell. Welcome back to The Tyler Tech Podcast. Thanks for joining me today.
Russell Gainford: Thanks, Josh. It's great to be here as always.
Josh Henderson: Let's just dive right into it. We have a white paper out right now that deals with the risks of not upgrading your legacy systems and modernizing your digital infrastructure.
You know, in the not-so-distant past, it may have been possible for government agencies to get away without utilizing modern digital tools, but now it really seems like a thing of the past. Can you provide an overview of sort of the key challenges that government agencies face when it comes to maintaining legacy systems and not modernizing their infrastructure?
Russell Gainford: Yeah. I mean, I think there's quite a bit. I mean, there's obviously expectations with constituents and different generations and how accessible everything is, but there's also kind of just a set of risks. So, there's things you want to do, there's benefits that you can have, better citizen and resident engagements, but then there's the risks of not doing that that go even beyond your constituent expectations.
So, just some of those that stick out to me is just the technical debt you're building up by not investing in the environments that you have. So, are you adding on a lot of customization? Are you doing things that are going to make things more difficult for you when you do decide to invest going to the future? You've got the staff that it takes to maintain these systems.
So, there's a lot of things that that our local government agencies could be doing and things they want to do. But if you have a lot of IT work that's required, it often becomes a bottleneck or breaking point for new initiatives that that would help your government agency move forward. And you have things like security, which is top of mind across the board, across all government agencies, private agencies. Certainly, it's something that you have to be continually cognizant on, and older systems and older libraries that are using those systems are something that has to be continually managed and that provide a level of threat detection for what you manage.
So, there's a level of risk there.
And then a lot of times, the ability to improve some of the technology and solutions that you're using involves integration and involves how you make your solutions across agencies, across departments, and sometimes even across different local government jurisdictions, more visible and allow kind of integrations between them. And trying to manage old infrastructure, old solutions, it really puts you in a bad spot as far as improving the integration interoperability that you have. And so those are all kind of key. And I would say probably the last one is just, when you are on old solutions and old products, whether it's the hardware themselves or the software themselves, you're putting yourself in a situation that you're at risk for the vendor management. And so, if you are most likely buying that hardware from a specific vendor, you're buying the software that you're using from a specific vendor.
And there's a level of risk that's there where those vendors may be reducing from a company size. They may not be investing. They may not be able to support you. They may be acquired.
And all of these things are areas that you should always be looking at as a technology leader and a constituent stakeholder. So, those are the things that I look at as far as, hey, I'm just going to take what I have that may be a bit older and due to budget or due to some of these things, I'm just going to leave it. There's always things that build up from that, and I look at those as the primary risks.
Josh Henderson: That's great. Now, let's dive a little bit deeper into each of those risks, but, you know, I'm sure you're you'd be able to spot some glaring differences between, you know, governments who have adopted a well-functioning modern digital infrastructure and those who haven't or are lagging behind, in that regard.
What are the implications of delaying technology modernization for government agencies in terms of technical debt specifically?
Russell Gainford: Yeah. So, I would say that if you are putting yourself in a situation that you have an older system and you just keep doing minor investments to add the small thing on or to have some technology added as kind of a bolt on, you end up in this this series of technical debt where you're building up an ecosystem of your digital solutions, your environment, that then has to be decomposed at some point in the future, and it becomes more expensive to do so. It's harder to continue to add items to it. So, budget constraints and things like that sometimes get people to make smaller patch patches on top of what they already have, and that technical debt will be something that you have to pay off.
You will then want to go to the latest solution to provide a better constituent experience. Right? Maybe you want that one view of the single wallet for all of your citizens to be able to pay in one place and reuse and everything else. But because you've bolted on three or four aging ways of doing that, it's significantly harder for you to do so.
So, technical debt is something that we say a lot on our software engineering side as far as something we continually need to work on and remove so that we can continue to add features faster and manage faster. And it’s the same way you should look at about at your digital solutions and your infrastructure is that, if you are continually planning out for the future and making those investments, you will always be able to move faster, provide the next service better. If you build up too much technical debt, it is so much harder to remove it.
Josh Henderson: And now another one of the risks the major risks is a is an aging work workforce or people, folks who are retiring out of the technology space. How do you see the retirement of the workforce impacting government's ability to maintain and support legacy systems?
Russell Gainford: Yeah. That’s a really good one. So, if we talk about the baby boomer generation, we talk about the rate of people retiring, and a lot of people aren't aware that there's a big disproportionate effect in local government that we see from that.
The number of people that are retiring from these agencies, it puts initiatives at risk. It also puts the actual support of basic services at risk, because these people have built up years and years of knowledge on these older systems that they're managing, and one day they're gone. And you're seeing things with skills gap and even staffing gap. There was a recent study where they were talking about some of the initiatives that are taking place in cities and states, even state level laws that they're bringing back retirees for certain periods of time afterwards because they simply can't support the systems or provide those services anymore.
So, that is one big risk that you have. Not only does it maybe impact the new things you want to do, it actually could impact the basic services that you're providing. Another thing with workforce that you should keep in mind is that, if you looked at, like, the number of job losses from COVID, the number of positions that were replaced and how fast it came back, it primarily came back fast in the private sector. And that for at least eighteen months afterwards, the public sector and local government significantly lagged behind on replacing the positions that have been lost during that time frame.
And if you are going out and getting a new, the next generation of IT workforce, and you're going to get those computer scientists or IT technicians or even the leadership from those areas. It's a lot harder when the job proposition that you're putting forward is that they're managing a very old legacy system. So, solutions can run for many years on older technology, but you also should consider that the workforce that you're hiring is now going to have to learn how to maintain that, and that might not be the first job that they want to take. So, you should consider the new work workforce you're bringing in as well as the number of skilled folks that have spent years learning that older technology leaving your workforce.
Josh Henderson: Yeah. And now, you know, when it comes to technology and when it comes to the government agencies and the public sector, security's always going to be a concern, just generally. What are the main security risks associated with continuing to rely on outdated technologies in government?
Russell Gainford: Yeah. So, there there's, of course, quite a few. So, if you if you think about older solutions, first thing is where are they running? So, it might not even be the software on those older solutions themselves, you are maybe running on an older data center that was been set up for the last 20, 30 years that maybe doesn't have the segmentation of the network that that minimizes some blast radius of security concerns. So, if something does happen, it could have a monumental effect instead of a smaller effect. Also, if you think about it, you may be relying on a smaller number of staff members to protect an older solution set or older data center where if you think about the number of bad actors out there coming in, it can be a zero-sum game. It's harder for you to protect that environment.
And so that is that is something that can be a big investment to try to counter. Now if you actually talk about the older software solutions that are out there, the solutions that have been in place for a very, very long time and don't have vendor support or you maybe have built on your own, well, those systems are going to have vulnerabilities that are found over time. Right? Vulnerabilities can be there for years before they're finally brought to light and bad actors start using them. It could be that new vulnerabilities and new changes have come up that you've implemented recently.
So, if you look at both the infrastructure and the environment you're running in and the age of that software and how it's being maintained, both of those can present significant risks that you have to invest a lot in to manage on your own.
Josh Henderson: Stay tuned. We'll be right back with more of The Tyler Tech Podcast.
Jade Champion: I hope you're enjoying listening to this episode of The Tyler Tech Podcast. My name is Jade Champion, and I'm here with Breanna Case to talk all things Tyler Connect 2024 in Indianapolis from May 19th to May 22nd.
Breanna Case: That's right, Jade. Our annual user conference is quickly approaching, and there's still time to register if you haven't already.
Jade Champion: And we have so much planned for this year, from special events to amazing speakers and plenty of networking opportunities. What are some highlights for 2024?
Breanna Case: We are really excited about some of the speakers we have coming to this stage. This year, you'll get to hear from best-selling author and FutureThink CEO, Lisa Bodell, chef, and author Jeff Henderson, as well as Black Ambition CEO, Felecia Hatcher.
Jade Champion: I also heard comedian Leanne Morgan will be performing at our Client Appreciation Event. We hope you're just as excited as we are to join us in Indy, where we're expecting over 5000 attendees and more than 800 sessions including product training and general education classes. If you still need to register, now's the time. Go to tylertech.com/connect. Now let's get back to The Tyler Tech Podcast.
Josh Henderson: The cloud is obviously a secure place for these agencies to be. But curious to get your take on what you see as the key benefits that government agencies can expect to gain from migrating their systems to the cloud?
Russell Gainford: Yeah. I think you just brought up one, like, from the security perspective.
Is it you maintaining your own private facility that you have a small number of people competing with bad actors, or is it moving to a vendor in the public cloud that has some of the world leading industry experts continually monitoring and managing those environments? And the cloud technologies nowadays, you can add things so much quicker. So, if you think about moving what you have and maybe moving to a new solution or actually going to a new version or a modernized version that's in the cloud, now you want to add a new service for your constituents. Well, the cloud lets you spin something up in minutes.
The cloud technologies nowadays, you can add things so much quicker. So, if you think about moving what you have and maybe moving to a new solution or actually going to a new version or a modernized version that's in the cloud, now you want to add a new service for your constituents. Well, the cloud lets you spin something up in minutes.
Russell Gainford
Senior Vice President, Cloud Strategy & Operations
You can pay for it by the hour. You can reserve it. You can use it as much as you want. You can do proof of concept.
So, by moving stuff to the public cloud, I mean, think about, you know, the converse of that. You want to try something new. Now you’ve got to go put in a purchase request for a new server. You’ve got to wait for that server to be delivered.
You’ve got to wait for a ticket for it to be manually set up for you. In the cloud, you can click a button, have it available in two to three minutes, do your proof of concept, and shut it down afterwards so you spend a fraction of the cost, and you're able to do it probably 10x faster than you're able ever able to do it before.
So, there's a reason people are doing this, and it's because they can go faster. They can serve their end users better, and you can provide a much better holistic constituent experience.
Josh Henderson: Yeah, and I think, you know, a through line for all of this through this entire conversation is needing, you know, leadership to accept innovation or to be open to change and implement these new systems. But what would you say are strategies that government leaders can implement to overcome resistance from whomever, maybe the workforce, maybe leadership, overcome that resistance to change and encourage the adoption of cloud-based solutions?
Russell Gainford: Yeah. And then when you talk about different groups, like, if you're within a large public sector jurisdiction, right, you mentioned the leadership group, and then you mentioned how the rest of the organization and the managers and the individual IT folks. And so, the way that I look at it is, first, you have your business case for why you're doing it, why it protects your jurisdiction more. And we just talked about a lot of those with the risks, and we talked about how much faster you can go.
We talked about what the benefits are. And once you get that alignment, you talk about creating what's called kind of your cloud adoption framework group. So, you want people that are then communicating and helping change the culture on why you're doing this. So, what you can't have happen is you can't say, I'm going to go decide I think we should move everything to the cloud and not have a strategy for how you're going to get there. And that's where communicating with leadership comes in because it's more than I want to move my one solution to the cloud. And now, oh, by the way, I didn't realize that was integrated to two of my other solutions. Now if that one goes, you have to have a plan that you're going to get everything to where you want it to be, but you're going to do it in a way that's not going to disrupt the citizen and your staff on the daily job that they're doing.
And once you kind of have that strategy, you need everybody to be part of it. People are going to be much more successful if everybody's aligned and everybody believes in where you're going, and they understand how you're going to get there. And that's where communication, communication, communication is key. So going back and working with all the team members and making sure you have a, like, a community of practice and a group that's working together to outline it.
Because if you, the more you communicate, these are not easy topics either. It's not just about, oh, you're going to now open up your website, and it's going to be over here. It's no, hey, we're moving this over here, and now we're getting a new user experience over here.
And so, people want to understand what's the plan to continue to improve as a team and as a workforce. And so, I think you start with your strategy, get buy in on your strategy, and then communicate that throughout the organization and continue to refine it if needed, till you get to your end state.
Josh Henderson: Yeah. The communication is key. Collaboration is key. You’re definitely right on the money with those.
So, one trend that we're seeing a lot too is artificial intelligence, obviously. I'm curious to get your take on any other trends that you're seeing in the adoption of cloud-based solutions among government agencies and particularly considering the risks associated with delaying technology modernization?
Russell Gainford: Well, I'll start a little bit here with AI. So, we all hear about AI every day, how fast it's going, the massive transformation that it's having on the industry. And what's amazing is how much more it's going to have over the many years to come, even just where will we be at the end of this decade.
And one of the reasons I hear about a lot in the cloud world is a lot of the artificial intelligence is only as good as the data that it's fed, that it's ingested, that, you know, the LLMs that are created off of it. And so, we hear about in the cloud because it requires a lot of compute. It requires a lot of data in one place. And the way I look at that in the cloud is that some of it's very similar to when we when we used to create data warehousing and big data projects.
Right? Your reports are only good as the data that you have. Well, your artificial intelligence is only as good as the data that you have for it to interact off of and the language models. And so, we do see a lot of that, and that that that is a big trend.
And, of course, there's a lot of potential for public sector, both for aiding the workforce. We talked about the retirements. We talked about the workforce.
And having more information quicker and being able to automate a lot of the tasks that used to be manual goes a long way to helping with some of the retirement concerns and crisis around supporting existing systems.
And there's many other trends that are happening now in the cloud we can talk about. You know, serverless infrastructure, but the centralized identity management, all the different things that are taking place. But the way I look at it is in the cloud where I see with public sector is that you can create a holistic citizen experience, that one view of your interaction. And so, there's the smart cities initiative.
There was some studies that I had read recently about how people view the place that they live. And a lot of it is not how you view the best neighborhood or the best tourist destination, but it's how you treat your entire jurisdiction, your entire city, your entire county, every single place. And if you go look at a lot of the rankings of people that put in where they live, how they feel about it, top cities in the world, top jurisdictions, A lot of it comes down to a lot of the experience with the city. How easy is it to interact?
How easy is it to get services? And so, IT and digital experiences are having a bigger impact on that. So that's a big trend. It's a big trend to say, I want to provide that one view for any citizen that needs help on where they're going, how they're interacting, and that we remember who they are, and they're not starting from scratch every time.
Josh Henderson: That's great. That's great. Now lastly, I just wanted to get your take just because, you know, from a from a cloud expert point of view, how quickly are things changing from your perspective? Like, you've been in the industry for a while. You know, you've seen you've seen how cloud has grown throughout the years. But let's say that in the last five, maybe ten years, like, what is the significance of the growth and the expansion of cloud just in general?
Russell Gainford: Well, I mean, if we talk about it from a public sector perspective, you're talking about the things we talked about before, just how easy it is for you to add new services, how much reuse you can have, how many systems you can connect together. I mean, I think we're just from a cloud perspective, I think we're really just scratching the surface on the benefit that data and information insights can have looking across counties that can share data real time that never could before, and then how that information is available to the state to help make some of their assembly bill decisions and stuff that, you know, just wasn't there before that was manual in the ways that they work through it.
I think for individuals and for companies, this idea of that we can connect these digital technologies across the world, that if I if I wanted to go create a new system that's, you know, available in Ireland and it wasn't the US, I can do that in minutes now where five, ten years ago, it was conversations on who you're going to work with and where are you going to host it and what data center and all the stuff that goes with that. So, what it's really accelerating is interconnections between people and interconnections between systems that were never possible before. So, I see this big benefit.
Josh Henderson: That's great. I think that's a perfect place to end it, Russell. Thank you again so much for joining us again on the podcast and hope to have you back on again soon.
Russell Gainford: Yes. Thank you very much for having me today.
Josh Henderson: I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Russell Gainford. If you'd like to learn more about the benefits of moving to the cloud and other topics discussed throughout the episode, check out our show notes for more resources.
A modern digital infrastructure allows the public sector to adapt in the digital age.
From operational agility to data management and analytics, as well as cost savings, security, compliance, and scalability, governments are poised to take advantage of innovative technology to create more efficiencies in their systems and better support and connect their communities.
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For Tyler Technologies, I'm Josh Henderson. Thanks for joining The Tyler Tech Podcast.