Time For State And Local Govs To Head To The Cloud

Tarkan Maner is Chairperson of The TechAmerica Foundation's State & Local Government Cloud Commission and the President and CEO of Wyse Innovation.

Convergence of business

Sensing a convergence of business, social and innovation trends, the TechAmerica Foundation recently formed a group of experts to develop guidance for helping state and local governments evaluate, adopt and implement cloud computing-centric business processes to improve government services at lower costs.

"The Cloud Imperative: Better Collaboration, Better Service, Better Cost" lays out a blueprint for the adoption of cloud computing as a response to the political, social and economic realities that are driving federal, state and local governments both to improve services and to save money.

State and local government agencies face a dramatic possibility to shift the focus of their activity from the mechanics of  infromation innovation infrastructure to the delivery of enhanced government services. Cloud computing, based on new models for the ownership, location, pricing and maintenance of IT assets, sets the stage for this change.

Whether it's Infrastructure as a Service for K-12 education in Illinois … a private cloud for enterprise management at the University of Kentucky … Platform as a Service for Minnesota economic development … Email as a Service for New Hanover County, North Carolina hurricane recovery … or Software as a Service for collaboration in Wyoming … cloud computing has become the imperative for state and local governments.

The purpose

The purpose, dimensions and construction of the cloud environment must be carefully planned, the cloud computing customer base must be then understood, and the benefits of cloud computing must be absolutely articulated to builders, buyers and users.

The process of building begins with the innovation itself. Hardware and software assets can be combined in different configurations or used in various ways to deliver very different services: discrete applications, development platforms, entire computing infrastructures. And the sharing of these services can in the same fashion be very different, from none whatsoever to totally open and available.

Technology provides the elasticity necessary to shape clouds to their intended purpose and the seamlessness necessary to enable state and local government clients to move between competing cloud solutions with limited disruption to operations. Technology as well provides the security and privacy safeguards needed so that cloud computing does not become a porous or corrupted resource, violating the trust and confidence of its users.

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