The virtual enterprise is still very fluid. Organizations like the U.S. Federal Government are continuing to use platforms to drive digital transformation, but how is that correlated to growth efficiencies and innovation? Are enterprises modernizing the experience for end users, from employees to citizens to foreign dignitaries?
Federal clients using Flosum with Salesforce as the platform of choice to deliver the virtual enterprise are using the connected platforms and architectures to create new avenues for growth and innovation while accelerating their business models.
We recently hosted a webinar titled Federal Success Through Salesforce DevSecOps to explore these concepts.
Examples of Customer Success
The Department of Justice (DOJ) is one of the largest departments in the federal government, and it needed to implement Salesforce case management quickly and with repeatable functionality to deploy across business units agencywide. They chose to work with Flosum, as the only product of its kind that ensures data stays within the boundaries of Salesforce and the government cloud, taking advantage of the security and controls of Salesforce. The DOJ recognized that they needed to build security and compliance into the process.
Additionally, this FedRAMP-compliant solution enabled them to maximize time designing and configuring the software, and minimized time spent building change sets and manual deployment steps.
Another example is the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), who needed to enable a new human resources application while coordinating with partners and maintaining compliance with strict governance and security standards. They turned to Flosum Release Management & Data Migration and stayed on a tight schedule and achieved greater efficiency and faster deployments with the only option approved to meet the agency’s very tight security standards. Its 100% native architecture—not just a UI layer like other AppExchange DevOps products—ensured no metadata or data would ever leave the government cloud.
Eliminating Complexity
Traditional DevOps products introduce complexity like conflict and dependencies, code overwrites, and sandbox synchronization. Flosum eliminates tasks that waste time and resources, allowing teams to focus on development and other priorities that deliver value to the organization rather than reworking code or dealing with quality issues.
Federal agencies, like private companies, are working to build better apps and improved customer experience while navigating a lack of resources and the need for features and functions to be designed and deployed at breakneck speeds. Tools like Flosum enable these agencies to implement a modern CI/CD pipeline and accelerate the value they bring to customers—internal or external—while keeping their information securely within Salesforce.
A Successful DevOps Strategy
The steps to developing a successful DevOps strategy start with understanding two key tenets of software development: software is never done and cyber-adversaries never quit. Any strategy needs to outline the desired outcome and the specific details about the tools that will be used as well as the metrics that will demonstrate success.
In the federal community, the best practice for DevOps is to use the center of excellence model. To develop and communicate a vision, and then change the culture, organizations should shift left and involve security and stakeholders from the start of the development process.
- Vision: Deliver resilient software at the speed of relevance with integrated security at every step.
- Strategy: Tie strategy to the agency mission.
- Security: Ensure security is an integral part of the process and continuously test and monitor across people, platforms and processes.
- Risk mitigation: Have an actionable plan in place on how and when to respond to risk and handle the unknown unknowns.
- Control: Understand what government risk and compliance (GRC) controls look like.
- Culture: Recognize ownership across departments and elements of the process and avoid silos that can cause challenges like disjointed communication and failure to monitor code.
Interesting in learning more? Watch the full webinar recording including an informative Q&A with the speakers, and schedule a free demo to see Flosum in action for yourself.
