NARTech: Delivering Seamless IT Governance Frameworks

NARTech

Urusa Salman, Chief Executive Officer, NARTechUrusa Salman, Chief Executive Officer
NARTech develops best in class IT solutions. The company was the first to develop and offer a complete production-ready Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution for a government client—hosted on the AWS GovCloud about 6 years ago. Since then, the company has kept up with all of the most recent advancements in AWS offerings and upgrades. For the AWS-based SaaS offering, NARTech completed the whole implementation within 6 months, including connectivity between AWS GovCloud and clients’ on-premises assets. This helped develop the client’s requirements and NARTech was able to deploy it using their continued integration and deployment (CI/CD).

The company recently completed their “All In” migration to the cloud and in the process reviewed 160+ available AWS services. In their upfront analysis and prototyping, they decided that it was better positioning to both understand and implement a best-of-breed solution across multiple cloud vendors. It took slightly more infrastructure planning and setup, but NARTech now has a long-term flexibility as the cloud space continues to grow. During and after, they documented the migration, the analysis, decisions, steps and the effort as they integrated various products. The study gives a glimpse into the complexity that an agency faces in their own cloud migration.

NARTech migrated their on-premises data center to AWS and Azure clouds by utilizing the new services offered by both cloud companies. For instance, AWS’ new service Transit Gateway, made it easier to connect the different networks (VPCs, VNets) within AWS, Azure environments, and NARTech on-premises. NARTech also started utilizing Amazon WorkSpaces to provide their staff a centralized desktop solution that they can securely access from any location. Also, they migrated their on-premises file share system to AWS utilizing the newly offered service FSx for Windows. AWS Patch Management service is used to update the critical OS and security patches in their Windows and Linux based EC2 instances.

In an interview with CIO Applications, Urusa Salman, CEO of NARTech, states that how NARTech is at the helm of providing a targeted set of capabilities that can support Federal clients in their transformational efforts.

What are the market pain points of your customers that have manifested as opportunities for your solution and approach?

NARTech’s ability to quickly prototype and develop proofs-of-concept leveraging AWS partnership address many pain points for our Government customers. With our Agile DevSecOps toolchain running in AWS cloud, we can begin solution development on Day 1 of contract award. NARTech understands how customers new to the cloud or new to custom application development may have anxiety about what the product may be. We know how important it is to get something soon in front of the customer that is then refined into the final deliverable. In that sense, the company has developed a “fast first view” approach that uses a combination of their in-house application forming techniques coupled with AWS cloud forming features.

Traditional in-house application development will take 3-6 months for acquisition, setup, and deployment before the client may see anything. The initial cost of hardware, the aging infrastructure and increased likelihood of failure or end of support are all very high. The cloud relieves these asset management pain points and the extent of disaster recovery is easier to test and implement.

We are a seasoned AWS solution delivery team. Being part of APN, we have insights into the current product line, upcoming offerings and how they apply, or may not apply, to the federal public sector space in their transformational efforts

Please elaborate on NARTech CMMI Level 5 High Maturity Software Development capability with Agile DevSecOps and how NARTech is committed to continuous improvement through regular IT modernization initiatives?

To NARTech, CMMI Level 5 is more than a badge; it is a commitment to continuous improvement and predictably meeting project goals for schedule, cost, and customer satisfaction. We are IT practitioners, so CMMI Level 5 practices are not merely an academic exercise for us. NARTech is a small business with an agile, innovative, and multi-skilled team of IT professionals who continuously research and implement CMMI, DevSecOps, and several other technologies/tools to actively support our clients. For instance, in this last round of capability improvements, NARTech has delivered a 25 percent reduction in cost via Automated Testing implementation and 75 percent savings via DevSecOps Pipeline and Application Generation on our CMMI L5- run application development, operations, and maintenance projects.

NARTech, Inc. has joined the Amazon Partner Network (APN) as a Select Tier Consulting Partner. How does this competency enhance your capability to deliver proven solutions on Amazon Web Services (AWS) platforms?

We are a seasoned AWS solution delivery team. Being part of APN, we have insights into the current product line, upcoming offerings and how they do or do not apply to the federal public sector space. APN certainly helps us stay current and even ahead of market trends and product releases through professional training and certification offerings.

With this level of AWS Select Tier Consulting Partnership, How is NARTech uniquely positioned to further help Government customers in accelerating their journey to the cloud?

As an AWS Select Tier consulting partner, we can leverage APN “Launched Opportunities” benefits to quickly develop prototypes and proofs-of-concept for our Federal clients to enable clients to see the proposed solution-in-action before committing further resources to it. Our experience and continued training keeps us aware of the scope of AWS product offerings and the subset of those that apply to the federal space. Combining these two together allows us to propose and implement best fit architectures. Ultimately, this results in reduced contract startup time and avoids delays or re-works in delivering the solution to production.

How did you keep track of the right ingredients that you wanted to have, to build the relevant solutions portfolio? How do you make sure that your offerings help organizations to understand real-world requirements and fulfill them?

NARTech’s Senior Technical and Management staff is continuously monitoring and researching the AWS and IT marketplace for value-add products. Many times, we apply the use of that product internally before recommending it to our clients. For instance, we recently moved all our virtual desktops/servers to AWS cloud, but as a prerequisite, we had to establish trusted network infrastructure and tunnels among our on-premise sites, AWS, and Azure clouds. In this migration project, NARTech utilized many new products, including the recently released shared authentication between cloud providers. We also developed lessons learned that could be of great benefit for our Government clients when they are ready for this type of massive multi-cloud migration task for us to support.

How has NARTech delivered best-in-breed solutions for the Amazon Cloud space and is poised to march ahead in the same fashion when it comes to responding to its clients’ needs. Can you provide us a sneak-peak as to what lies ahead for your firm?

NARTech is committed to not just starting but finishing IT modernization jobs that we undertake for our federal clients. With our CMMI Level 5 software development expertise, we mature these MVPs (minimum viable products) into production-ready solutions to benefit the organization in its entirety. In other words, many leading-edge technology prototypes are in-progress in our client shops, NARTech is the team with highly mature discipline and proven record, to take those to the finishing line.

Everyone says go “All In” but no one has the budget for it. Phased implementation allows for realistic cost management while the hundreds, if not thousands, of applications, releases, and servers are migrated. It takes additional money to migrate and that total cost of ownership is not lowered until decommissioning of the legacy environment occurs.

NARTech has been continually researching and applying new products and features to their internal and client projects from the AWS marketplace. There are over 175 AWS products and services (such as Serverless Architecture, Machine Learning (ML), Autonomic (I.e. self-regulating), and Robotic Process Automation (RPA)) that often are still at the prototypical stage in Government agencies. And, those prototypes we like to take to the finish line with our best-in-breed CMMI Level 5 software development discipline and proven enterprise-level implementation techniques so the entire client organization can benefit from it.

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