View the entire newsletter for more articles: 2022 – NJAC County Biz – March
by Joanne Goodstadt, Marketing Manager for PKA Technologies
Technology underpins much of government’s relationship with its constituents. However, outdated systems make it difficult to deliver essential services efficiently and securely. Many state and local governments spend as much as 80 percent of their technology budgets on operating and maintaining legacy IT systems, some of which are decades old.
The cloud is one possible path to increased IT resiliency, scalability, flexibility and speed. In a new study from the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) and Accenture, 57 percent of public sector technology leaders say accelerating cloud adoption is mission-critical, and 83 percent believe it is essential for fueling innovation and meeting evolving demands.
However, the cloud can’t address all of government’s IT issues. Most agencies have important applications, data and workloads that need to remain onsite or in colocation environments due to data sensitivity, application dependencies and regulatory compliance issues. That’s why IT modernization is a top priority for state and local governments.
Increasing Speed and Agility
Two key benefits of the cloud are flexibility and elasticity. It’s easy to add new infrastructure, applications and services without the typically tedious process of provisioning in-house resources.
Flexible pricing models also make the cloud cost-effective for budget-conscious agencies. Agencies can consume hosted infrastructure, applications, storage and other resources on an on-demand basis with the ability to scale up or down freely. This model helps reduce operational costs by 31 percent compared to similar on-premises infrastructure, according to an IDC study.
Government agencies can still enjoy cloud-like benefits with on-premises solutions. HPE GreenLake is a Consumption-as-a-Service (CaaS) offering that encompasses the core systems, networking and data protection agencies need to jumpstart their modernization initiatives. Agencies gain on-demand capacity and economics with the performance, security and control of on-premises IT infrastructure.
Building-Block Approach
HPE calls GreenLake an edge-to-cloud platform built on secure, cloud-native infrastructure with a streamlined management experience. The platform comprises multiple modular building blocks of HPE hardware and software that enable a great deal of standardization across the IT environment. That reduces complexity and gives users the agility and simplicity they would expect of a cloud environment while maintaining the governance, compliance and visibility of on-premises resources.
In addition to compute, storage and networking, GreenLake provides access to an array of services, including containers, virtual machines, analytics and more. The GreenLake portfolio also features complete and preconfigured systems to support specific workloads.
HPE manages these systems throughout their lifecycle. In exchange, users pay a monthly subscription fee based on a pay-for-use pricing structure similar to many cloud services.
Government organizations face increasing pressure to update their IT environments, and cloud services certainly play a role in modernization efforts. However, HPE GreenLake offers a way to gain cloud-like agility and scalability while maintaining in-house control of critical applications and data.
Call PKA today at 800.486.6461 or email solutions@pkatech.com to schedule an onsite assessment.