How Much Money Are Taxpayers Saving via the Cloud?!!!!
OK, if you’re not convinced of cloud computing’s financial benefits yet, here’s a bit of information that should help convert you. In a recent article on the growing government cloud, I saw that the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has achieved significant cost savings by moving USA.gov to cloud infrastructure and services provider Terremark Worldwide.
Just how much? Remember now, this is money you and I, taxpayers, that is, shell out. It doesn’t come from some private corporation’s operating revenue. In the story, the GSA revealed that the annual cost of maintaining USA.gov in the cloud is $800,000. While that may seem like a lot of money, it pales in comparison to the $2.5 million GSA used to spend before the transition. The earlier figure included hardware costs, which the cloud vendor now covers.
Said Martha Dorris, deputy associate administrator for the Office of Citizen Services, which maintains USA.gov, in the story: “We were in a situation where our infrastructure required a lot of staff resources to maintain it every day. [Moving to the cloud] freed up resources, which we have used to upgrade our content management system to give us the ability to incorporate new functionalities and features on USA.gov to make the citizen’s experience the best it can be.”
Elasticity of infrastructure is crucial because USA.gov gets about 342,000 visits on any given day, and traffic fluctuates wildly depending on external events. So, recognizing that it’s important to plan for infrastructure overload and avoid downtime, Dorris added that the GSA recently bought additional space in the cloud to create a mirror image of the site in case the original goes down.
It’s easier, too, to upgrade USA.gov now that it’s operating in a cloud. It generally takes a day – versus up to six months the old way.
Still, despite the advantages of cloud computing, it apparently took the GSA IT staff some convincing to make the switch. “”It was a big change for the technical staff that worked in this environment,” Dorris noted in the article. “We took a lot of time and effort to make people feel comfortable.”
USA.gov was able to transition to the cloud in only 10 days, with one additional weekend of testing.
In this recession-plagued economy, when taxes are rising to cover the cost of more services and greater debt, it makes more sense than ever for the government to make smart changes – in order to be more efficient and save money. Glad to hear I know I’m saving some money, at least to keep USA.gov going.
See also How Taxpayers Are Saving via Cloud Computing
