Government agencies may have been a little slower to migrate to the cloud than their commercial counterparts but many have now made the move and are already reaping the benefits. In this article, we’re going to take a look at 3 of the most important ways in which cloud servers can help government agencies and other public sector organisations in Australia.
3 Ways to Benefit From Cloud Computing in the Public Sector
There are many more than 3 ways in which public sector organisations can benefit from cloud computing solutions: those listed below are simply 3 of the most crucial as far as most experts are concerned.
1. Security – Recent studies showed that government agencies in the USA are having to deal with a greater number of data security breaches every year. There is good reason to assume that this is the case for government agencies in other countries too, including ours. The difficulties associated with implementing effective defences on legacy systems are well-known to government insiders and have yet to be overcome to the satisfaction of all interested parties. Cloud platforms, on the other hand, employ the best available security currently available, which helps to make them one of the safest places to store sensitive data today. This is a great help to all types of government agencies and is one of the biggest reasons for the increase in public sector cloud migrations in recent years.
2. Compliance – All government agency workers are familiar with the difficulties posed by ever-changing rules and regulations. What was the officially accepted way of doing things one month may be completely unacceptable the next. Annual changes in federal and state regulations can also place a great strain on the administrative capabilities of many government agencies. Cloud platforms offer a way out of this regulatory nightmare as far as IT departments are concerned, by leveraging the knowledge and expertise of your cloud service provider to ensure continuing compliance. Major service providers are certified as being in compliance with many international security standards and IT regulations, which means they are capable of ensuring their customers remain in full compliance too.
3. Availability – Government agencies that are responsible for the welfare of millions of people simply cannot afford to lose access to their IT systems for any length of time. It is in this respect that cloud solutions really shine. Whether your data and applications reside on Amazon servers in Australia or Microsoft servers in Europe, you can be sure that availability will never be an issue. Unlike legacy systems, where just 1 or 2 critical failures could bring everything to a standstill, a global cloud platform could cope with dozens of simultaneous failures without any effect on the performance or availability of your apps and data. With built-in data redundancy and some of the most advanced IT equipment in use today, cloud platforms are the best choice for organisations that need their systems to be available all of the time.
Other benefits that cloud solutions have to offer government agencies in Australia and elsewhere are scalability, flexibility, competitive pricing and a global network of highly connected data centres. With so many potential benefits on offer, it is the agencies that leave their migration plans on the back burner that are most likely to encounter difficulties in the future.
