Not that moving to the cloud was its original intention, as Richard Godfrey, ICT, strategy, infrastructure and programme manager for Peterborough Council explained: "We've been looking at how we deliver our IT service and how we deliver services in general as a council, which is kind of what led to a new IT strategy. It wasn't really written as a ‘sit down and write a cloud strategy for the council', it just so happened that moving towards cloud was the natural fit."
Like other local authorities, Peterborough Council is under pressure to reduce costs, which means "we have to look at new, innovative ways of working", said Godfrey.
"We'll invest wisely in the ICT budgets and invest in the technologies that enable the departments to change the way they operate and develop services.
"It's not a ‘reduce IT spending' exercise, it's about giving the staff the tools, software and applications they need in order to deliver better services for less," he added.
Peterborough therefore examined a number of potential data centre and cloud solutions, before deciding Amazon Web Services was the "standout" candidate.
"The overall plan is to move to as much as ‘cloud-as-a-service' as possible, and so what we put into AWS today won't be what's there in two years' time," Godfrey said.
"We're looking at shrinking it as much as we can, so when we renew in a couple of years, it'll be 25 per cent of what we use today and everything else will be as a service." he continued.
Part of the savings that Godfrey anticipates will come from simply turning servers off when their workload slackens.
"Obviously, with Amazon, as you turn servers off, even if it's just overnight, you get a reduced bill, you're only billed for what you use," said Godfrey.
"The tools AWS give you a much wider range of options which hopefully will lead the way in how we drive down costs in IT," he added.
Godfrey said another benefit from moving to the cloud will be lower server maintenance and power costs.
"Obviously, it costs a lot for the power we currently have to provide. We've got big air-conditioning units which aren't on their last legs, but they've failed once or twice in the past," he said, highlighting one of the reasons why server availability should improve under AWS.
"[Availability] is just higher than what I could guarantee with an on-site service," he said.
Godfrey acknowledged that there are still some who worry about data security in the cloud - especially in the public sector. "We obviously know there are concerns around the cloud about data and it's probably why we're doing it slower than I'd like," he said.
But with AWS offering encryption and other security tools, Godfrey argued that there are far more positive aspects than negative ones in shifting council infrastructure to the cloud.
"Some people come up with reasons not to do it, but I think the reasons to do it are more important" he said. "I work very closely with our governance team to make sure we're doing everything we're required to do."
And Peterborough Council has been working very closely with AWS, too, with Godfrey describing the relationship between the authority and the vendor as very positive.
"Support has been excellent. We've had some very good conversations with them, they're very willing to work with us and want to help as much as possible," he said.
"They've been excellent from day one," Godfrey concluded.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Danny Palmer
Quelle/Source: Computing, 19.01.2015
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