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How Todays Government, Education, and Healthcare Organizations Are Benefiting from Cloud Computing Environments
White Paper
Authors Fernando Macias, Solutions Architect, Cisco Global Government and Security Greg Thomas, Senior Manager, Cisco Global Government and Security
Cloud computing is taking the public sector by storm as ICT professionals gain more confidence in this still-evolving technology and discover the many ways it can benefit their organizations. They are moving to eliminate expensive and inefficient information silos, but in doing so they have legitimate concerns about maintaining service availability and data security. All this is part of a major trend away from concentrated asset ownership and toward shared-resource ICT environments. Collaboration applications, particularly email and web conferencing, tend to be at the top of the to-do list for cloud service deployments in many public organizations because they can be easily adapted to a cloud model. Mobile employees and teleworkers benefit from these applications because they can access them from anywhere, using a variety of devices. Virtual desktops facilitate the advantages of cloud-based applications.
If an agency wants to launch a new innovative program, it can do so by leveraging cloud infrastructure without having to acquire significant hardware, lowering both time and cost barriers to deployment.
United States Federal Cloud Computing Strategy
CIOs in government, education, and healthcare organizations have been quick to explore new approaches that increase operational efficiency and productivity, while at the same time maximizing investments and lowering costs. With its emphasis on consolidation, virtualization, and automation, cloud computing has emerged as an important strategy for achieving these goals. When chosen carefully and implemented properly, a cloud deployment can help CIOs perform the balancing act required to resolve critical tradeoffs.
In addition, administration, office productivity, program/project management, and content management applications have become good candidates for clouds, particularly private and hybrid infrastructures. Customer relationship management (CRM) and specialized, custom-built applications are also getting the cloud treatment. Cautious organizations often start by moving noncritical business applications or discrete pilot projects into a cloud environment, and then follow that up with mission-critical applications as they refine and gain confidence in their cloud infrastructure. Because cloud environments are based on a consolidation of resources, they tend to encourage integration of skills within data centers. Instead of separate teams that focus exclusively on the network, servers, security, and storage, the cloud paradigm encourages ICT groups to adopt a service management model in which expertise is pooled and tasks are undertaken in concert.
Cloud computing is also on the rise in the European Union. The EUs cyber security agency ENISA has concluded in a report that private and community clouds best fit the needs of public administrations that want to achieve the highest level of data governance. The report recommends a European Governmental cloud as a supra national virtual space where a consistent and harmonized set of rules could be applied, both in terms of legislation and security policy and where interoperability and standardization could be fostered. Cloud services in all sectors are expected to generate revenues of about 35 billion (US$50 billion) in Europe by 2014, according to IDG News Service. Cloud computing has also taken firm root in the Asia Pacific region. According to a Frost & Sullivan report (May 2011), 21 percent of respondents to a regional survey have adopted clouds in one form or another. China is building a city-sized cloud computing and office complex that will include a mega data center. India is looking to extend and improve the nations education system by moving critical applications such as virtual learning environment (VLE), learning management system (LMS), and student information system (SIS) implementations into an education cloud.
portal providing online learning and virtual classrooms. The cloud will also enable a virtual classroom environment that allows teachers and students to use, share, and upload instructional content regardless of physical location. The cloud implementationa Vblock 1 platform that integrates a Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) with EMC storage and a VMware hypervisorenabled Castilla-La Mancha to reduce the number of physical data centers from 48 to 2 and to automate workloads. Potential savings: about 400,000 (US$550,000). For more information, see the video.
of hiring internal IT staff to maintain in-house infrastructure. In addition, cloud deployments give large provider networks the ability to strengthen relationships with referring physicians and patients. Cloud services provide all these organizations with convenient, on-demand access to a common pool of configurable computing resources: networks, servers, security, storage, applications, and services. With a cloud implementation, an organization can tap the compute power available over the Internet, reaping the advantages of data center consolidation and shared public and private resources. Moreover, users can access virtualized, productivity-boosting services that were previously unavailable to them. In fact, virtualization is currently a major driver of cloud deployment across all sectors. Clouds allow even small public sector organizations in local communities to innovate in ways that would not be possible were they forced to rely entirely on their own resources. Cities can share resources across a region, and agencies can collaborate across jurisdictions. These entities can move forward to take advantage of cloud technologies in a short period of time, without a large cash outlay. Furthermore, the public sector in developing countries will be able to adopt advanced applications more quickly and economically using cloud-based infrastructures, in much the same way that phone users in those countries were able to leap directly to new-generation mobile communications and thus avoid the need for an expensive landline infrastructure.
of complexity, but the benefits include improved agility and additional options for future enhancements. For example, as workforces become increasingly mobile, virtualized desktops allow them to do their work anywhere, on a variety of personal devices. Virtual machines are not tied to particular servers, so they can migrate among physical devices and across geographies. Simple scalability: With bandwidth-hungry applications proliferating, the networks traffic keeps increasing, even if the number of users stays the same. With a cloud platform, managers can add capacity on demand without having to determine requirements beforehand or go through many of the traditional procurement, provisioning, and implementation processes. Load fluctuations are less of a problem when capacity can be added almost instantly. Of course, ICT groups still need to maintain robust network infrastructures regardless of which cloud models they implement. Elastic services: The cloud approach makes it easier for organizations to expand or contract services quickly by tapping into shared pools of resources or implementing prepackaged capabilities developed by third parties specifically for clouds. Furthermore, private cloud deployments using multitenant servers mitigate the server sprawl that often accompanies growth. Fast deployment: With software vendors increasingly delivering their products preinstalled in virtual machines, much of the traditional installation and configuration work associated with software deployment may not be necessary for a cloud implementation. Increased flexibility: The variety of cloud deployment and service models ensures that implementations can be aligned closely with business needs and ICT strategies. Many public sector organizations are choosing a hybrid cloud approach that lets them benefit from both private and public clouds.
redundant, uniform pool that can be configured on demand. We can respond to client requests in days versus the 6 to 12 months that a competitor might need, says Billy Steeghs, senior vice president of IT. Were able to sprint while other companies are still walking. For more information, download the success story.
Of the non-ICT respondents, 61 percent said that cloud computing is playing a role in shaping their organizations overall business strategy, and 28 percent said that the cloud is playing a critical role. Not surprisingly, the survey found that a large majority of the organizations involve their ICT groups in final cloud purchases; a minority (41 percent) actually require ICT involvement. In fact, a range of individuals and groups often participate in the cloud adoption process, including upper-level management. In addition, the survey revealed that only 33 percent of the respondents were very confident that their current network was ready for cloud computing, while 41 percent were somewhat confident. This suggests that many organizations have some work to do before they feel confident that their infrastructures are cloud-ready.
Percent of Respondents 79 77 76 75 70 65 65 63 61
Conclusion
For a significant number of ICT decision makers today, cloud computing is a catalyst, if not a prerequisite, for innovation and transformation. The cloud approach is an important component in many e-governance, education, and healthcare strategies worldwide. Cloud computing can greatly benefit public sector organizations of all types and sizes by: Reducing costs and controlling costs: Consolidate facilities, optimize human capital, utilize assets efficiently, reduce CapEx, meter and charge for services Improving agility and adaptability: Virtualize resources, increase capacity with simple scalability, expand or contract services to meet demand, deploy software quickly, expand flexibly to meet needs Enhancing services and collaboration: Take advantage of leading-edge applications, provide broad access for stakeholders, improve collaboration Addressing risk issues: Maintain critical service levels, help ensure resilience, choose cloud computing options that meet security and privacy requirements According to survey results, top drivers for cloud computing implementations include business continuity, flexibility, better customer service, waste reduction, innovation, and the need for real-time information. The impetus for adopting a cloud approach comes from all parts of public sector organizations, but there is some concern about network readiness. By selecting their cloud models wisely and aligning them closely with their organizations business model, public sector ICT decision makers can deploy an effective, economical solution, while also successfully addressing reliability, data management, and security issues.
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