The Power of Choice for U.S. Government Customers: Insights from Tricia Fitzmaurice, VP of Sales

The balance between modernizing IT infrastructure and preserving existing investments presents a major concern for the U.S. Government. Tricia Fitzmaurice, Vice President of Sales at Rancher Government Solutions (RGS), shares how RGS is transforming the approach to IT modernization, giving government customers and partners unparalleled flexibility and choice. Allowing them to leverage new technologies without the constraints of vendor lock-in or hardware limitations, ensuring a future-proof IT environment.

Embracing Flexibility Without Sacrifice 

Rancher Government Solutions (RGS) stands apart from the competition by offering a unique value proposition to its customers: embrace the future without the requirement to fully abandon your current IT investments. Rancher’s solutions integrate into existing IT frameworks effortlessly. This integration allows agencies to leverage the latest Kubernetes, containers, and cloud-native applications, sidestepping the expensive and disruptive rip-and-replace strategies associated with IT modernization.

Acknowledging the widespread adoption of RHEL within the U.S. Government, RGS’s strategy is not focused on replacing foundational elements of your IT stack but on enhancing them, focusing on the Kubernetes layer and its rich ecosystem. We deliver this nuanced strategy through secure and certified open-source and cloud-native software to help our customers manage containerized applications and workloads effectively while prioritizing security and compliance.

This agnostic approach frees government agencies from being locked into any single vendor or platform. Whether managing virtual machines or running production workloads in edge locations, RGS provides secure-by-default solutions. With this suite of solutions, government agencies can manage existing legacy systems while at the same time leveraging new open source solutions.

An Incremental Approach to Modernization 

Rancher Government's platform allows customers to keep what they already have while incrementally adopting modern, cloud native, open source container technologies. Rancher’s solutions sit seamlessly in your existing IT infrastructure footprint. While Rancher does have a Kubernetes distribution, we can manage any Kubernetes distribution from a single pane of glass. It's about being able to start modernizing your infrastructure immediately because Rancher can deploy alongside your existing services and enable you to leverage the power of containers, Kubernetes, and the open source community and ecosystem.  

Agencies can build onto and enhance their existing IT infrastructure with Rancher’s solutions without major spending on new tech stacks. Our goal is for our customers to always have choice. It's at the center of how we build our solutions and of our dedication to the open source development paradigm. RGS is dedicated to helping our customers avoid vendor lock-in, by promoting a modular, customizable approach to IT infrastructure. Our goal is to prioritize mission-specific adaptability to ensure broad compatibility, scalability and control across your entire IT ecosystems.

These government-ready solutions include:

Rancher Multi-Cluster Manager (MCM): This application manages various technologies across cloud, data center, and edge workloads. As a DISA STIG-validated Kubernetes management platform, Rancher MCM helps government customers manage legacy, cloud, and edge infrastructures from a single pane of glass.

Rancher Kubernetes Engine 2 (RKE2): This next-gen Kubernetes engine is DISA STIG-certified Kubernetes distribution for the Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, and civilian agencies. Easy to install and secure by default, this solution is built to run on government mission-critical infrastructure on-prem, in the cloud, or at the edge.

Harvester: Run VM workloads and container workloads together seamlessly. This hyper-converged infrastructure solution takes government missions where they want to go by enabling the deployment of containerized workloads at the tactical edge, ensuring operational continuity regardless of location. 

K3s: This lightweight, certified Kubernetes distribution was built for government production workloads inside IoT appliances in edge locations. This ultra-lightweight application is modular and flexible enough to run several Kubernetes clusters at a time in fewer steps.

NeuVector: As the only open-source, zero-trust container security platform, NeuVector secures Kubernetes containers and applications wherever they are. Providing full life cycle DevSecOps security gives government agencies the technical superiority to defend any hybrid, airgap, and cloud-based container deployment.

Rancher Government Carbide™: This additional security service for RGS Subscription customers ensures supply chain integrity and supports federal security compliance. Through its integrated compliance tool, STIGATRON, Carbide validates downstream clusters from Rancher MCM and automates the software security and validation process to enable compliance with federal government security standards. 

The Future Powered by Choice

Rancher Government Solutions is redefining IT modernization for federal agencies, leading with a strategy emphasizing choice, flexibility, and strategic integration. This forward-thinking approach ensures government customers and partners can adapt to the future of IT without sacrificing their past investments. By offering customizable, secure solutions that integrate seamlessly with existing systems, RGS enables government agencies to transition to modern tech stacks at their own pace. 

This strategic vision champions a future where government IT is not constrained by past limitations but is empowered to embrace new possibilities. Rancher Government’s insights highlight a new path forward where choice and adaptability lead the way, setting a new standard for how U.S. Government customers approach digital transformation.

Additional Resources

• The Rancher Government Guide to Edge Computing in a Cloud-Native World
• Simplifying the Airgap Experience with Rancher Government Hauler
• Pioneering Secure by Default Open-Source Kubernetes Solutions for Government 
• The Ultimate Guide to Kubernetes Security 

Interested in learning more about our secure by default Kubernetes solutions?