Government Clouds a Global Phenomenon
Local and national governments around the world continue to migrate data and productivity applications to the Cloud – as part of initiatives to save money and make processes more efficient.
We’ve certainly seen cloud computing initiatives in the U.S., for example, the city of L.A.’s migration this year from internal email to Google’s Gmail – a move expected to save the city hundreds of thousands of dollars over several years. And cities around the U.S. are considering conversion to the cloud, too.
National governments, too, are developing private clouds. The U.S. announced its Apps.gov initiative last year (Google’s handling this one), and the Japanese have built an infrastructure dubbed the Kasumigaseki Cloud.
But now, from across the pond (the Atlantic ocean, that is) comes news that the U.K. government plans to save more than £3 billion pounds yearly by 2013/14 by sharing software and IT services in the cloud. The British want to build a government-wide cloud computing platform (to be called the G-Cloud) and an application store, among other IT strategies.
Right now, Whitehall (as the government sector is known) runs on hundreds of data centers and tens of separate networks. And that’s just not going to work going forward, according to Government CIO John Suffolk, in a story about the initiative. Here’s more on how the U.K. government would save: right now, public sector agencies buy many separate versions of the same type of software packages, serving common departments such as HR and finance, as well as much of the same IT infrastructure. But the centralized G-Cloud would allow the public bodies to reuse the same software applications.
The British G-Cloud would slash the number of data centers from hundreds to about 12, which would save British taxpayers about £300 million pounds per year and cut server power and cooling costs by 75%. Plus, the G-Cloud’s app store, where government agencies could re-use apps on a pay-as-you-go basis, is estimated to save another £500 million pounds per year.
Britain’s proposal is impressive, and I expect we’ll see even more cloud development by governments around the world. And as we do, we’ll see even more demand for ways to monitor cloud platforms.
It makes sense to protect your investment in a cloud provider – especially when public money is at stake.