How IT and Cloud Computing can help the Local Government Agencies?

With the technology department becoming a key component in delivering high quality citizen services, state government authorities are looking at various options to revamp their IT strategies. There are two important challenges for the state government when it comes to IT infrastructure. Firstly, the changing economic conditions and recession have forced the state governments to lower their budgets. Secondly, changing citizen demands on par with the innovation in technology is forcing the state authorities to realign their IT strategies for creating the required opportunities for everyone. The challenge is to balance the limited resources with performance. This is where the cloud computing technology comes to the rescue.

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Challenges in the path to the cloud

Technology and people are the two important challenges for the city and county authorities with regard to cloud adoption. As cloud computing technologies offer a range of services, it is important to gain a thorough understanding on its functionality. As new technologies keep evolving, the staff has to quickly adapt themselves these changes. Secondly, the culture and mindset of the people has to be changed as well. While some staff is apprehensive of losing their jobs, others feel insecure about hosting the data in the cloud. Certain employees are reluctant to learn new technologies as they feel the present situation is just fine. However, local authorities need to understand that there is a higher level of data security in the cloud than a local leased data center. Looking at the private sector capitalizing on the cloud, local authorities are now increasing moving to the cloud.

Benefits of cloud computing

Benefits of cloud computing to the State Government sector. The transition to the cloud has significantly lowered IT costs while offering several amazing benefits to the state government sector. Here are a few:

Security matters in the cloud

Security is the top priority for the public sector. And, cloud networks are more secure than traditional IT environments as they are always protected by world-class security solutions that are up-to-date. For increased security, state government agencies and departments can categorize sensitive and non-sensitive resources to move them to private and public clouds respectively.

On-demand self service

Another important requirement for any state government agency is the scalability of resources on-demand. With unpredictable traffic surges, state departments have to scale up resources without investing in the infrastructure. The cloud provides automatic provision of computing resources without requiring human intervention.

Economies of scale

The cloud offers a multi-tenant environment wherein resources are shared between multiple users. Government agencies can take advantage of this economies of scale to host less-sensitive data and applications on a multi-tenant platform while moving sensitive and mission-critical applications to the private cloud network. The infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offers the most achievable economies of scale. With low CapEx, government agencies can try the cloud model and realign strategies accordingly.

Mobility Solutions

The current innovation in the communication technology has brought an array of devices into picture. Today, citizens are expecting to access government records from a range of devices. The cloud provides the flexibility for the state government agencies to centrally host resources and securely publish them to any device, anytime and to any location. Regardless of the model and make of the device, citizens can access information and services from the comfort of their homes.

Choosing the right cloud provider

While moving to the cloud, the state government agencies should take utmost care in choosing the right cloud service provider. Improved operational efficiency, integrated processes and better management of data across the infrastructure are the three important requirements for the current public sector at the state government level. The current cloud computing solutions are mostly designed for private sector and commercial businesses. The state government requires customized solutions that effectively handle their day-to-day procedures while being easy to deploy and manage. CenterServ is one of the few cloud computing providers that offer customized solutions for state government agencies.

With thousands of nodes located in 200 countries, your data is always available online 24/7. CenterServ is not affiliated or obliged to any product, service or solution which means your organization is entitled for the best available alternative for any specific purpose or need. Most importantly, CenterServ solutions are cost-effective.