The Microsoft National Security Symposium is an event that brings government decision-makers together to understand technology advancements that serve our shared missions. Microsoft, technology partners, and government agencies share their experiences and solutions for security and compliance, modernization, AI and analytics, multi-cloud deployments, and more.

This year, Wade Allen, VP of Defense at AIS, sat down with David Porter, AE for the National Security Group at Microsoft, to talk about how our partnership, mission focus, and agile approach have yielded successful outcomes across the Federal government. In case you missed it, we’ve recapped the key takeaways from the discussion in this blog, including the following words of wisdom:

• Always keep the mission at the forefront no matter what.
• An agile mindset and practices are required to move quickly.
• Embrace partnerships for a thriving ecosystem where you can leverage each partners’ strengths to get to the right mission solution. It’s all about the relationship, just like a marriage. You may not always agree, but there is open communication, everyone has a voice, and everyone must listen. This creates a good balance between teams that can adapt to the speed of the mission.

The Power of Partnership

Finding a partner and CSP with a good relationship can greatly impact your ability to affect mission results. A successful partner extends the products, skillsets, and value of the cloud provider to drive forward the mission.

As a Microsoft partner since 1994, AIS has been at the forefront of industry-leading solutions within both the public and private sectors. Our partnership with Microsoft is based on close relationships with leadership, account, engineering and product teams, award-winning solutions on Azure and Power Platform, and certified capabilities and advanced specializations. Reach back to Microsoft’s engineering group to inform the path forward for our customers, especially with so much unchartered territory, allows us to accelerate mission results.

We have worked closely with Microsoft on many new territory projects in military departments and the 4th estate. AIS is working with Microsoft overseas to co-create solutions for the warfighter on the Azure platform. We are working on disconnected cloud solutions and deployment across Microsoft’s IL2, IL4, IL5, and IL6 environments.

After decades of partnership, we work better together and use each other’s strengths to provide innovative solutions that trickle down from the cloud provider and partner through the organization to end-users, equipping all levels with the solutions and data they need when they need it.

A Business Model that Serves

The AIS approach builds on a sound foundation of Azure expertise and past performance. Our experience has allowed us to gain a deep understanding of Microsoft technologies to deliver better solutions and meet the needs of the mission. We build and test best practices, then prepare and teach our client’s internal teams how to leverage them.

“We have been able to take the vision of the customer and tools that exist today to create a roadmap, work towards the mission goal through unknowns while creating reusable assets for best practices, and be able to move with speed.” -Wade Allen, VP of Defense

AIS has worked closely with Microsoft engineering and created a feedback loop that feeds directly into the product roadmap. These assets then find their way into the end-user’s hands. We understand and help change the customer needs based on their roadmap while educating what needs to be prioritized.

We “wrap our arms around our customers” to help teams adopt and embrace new technology and solutions rather than managing it for them. Our goal is to empower our customers with the quickly changing technology. We host workshops, internal boot camps through our internal training (aisU), and many educational sessions around cloud and other emerging technologies. Our passion is to upskill soldiers and provide them with the ability to build solutions and independently operate them without relying fully on an SI.

Getting Over the Compliance Hurdle

When it comes to the cloud, don’t get too focused on the technology. Cloud outcomes are not fully dependent on cloud technologies alone. In many cases in the federal government, compliance is the long pole in the tent. AIS has led the way in achieving ATO and has led many security and compliance firsts in Azure and AzureGov. We’ve been able to align with federal compliance changes quickly by leveraging DevSecOps processes, automating STIG processing, using native cloud monitoring tools like Azure Sentinel, and much more.

Partner Qualities that Count

When choosing your co-pilot in cloud transformation, you need a partner that can serve the mission. With the rapidly changing technology landscape and mission needs, it’s essential to be agile and flexible to pivot when challenges arise. Look for a partner that is open, honest, agile, and flexible. You don’t want a partner that is just going to tell you what you want to hear.

Partnerships like AIS and Microsoft bring extreme value to our customers because of our ability to keep up with agile business changes and developments in the cloud. We couldn’t do it without the tools and insight that Microsoft brings to the table and our talented, one-of-a-kind team at AIS.