The Australian Government and the Public Cloud
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The Australian Government and the Cloud Greg Mace, Health and Public Sector Lead Avanade, looks at the options open to government in moving to Cloud post the 2014 Technology in Government EXPO. The Technology in Government Expo 2014 at the National Convention Centre is an event that not only showcases products and business services from vendors and providers across the globe, but it brings pre-eminent thought leaders in Government together to explore the immediate and challenging issues facing the Public sector at this time. The Keynotes from prominent Federal Government Bureaucrats were informative but the most interesting part of the Expo was the Private Vs Public Cloud roundtable. I have attended similar roundtables in recent years however, this year, the argument changed. What has changed? In previous years, it appeared that agencies were trying to establish barriers for public cloud, security, data sovereignty, Privacy Act, Patriot Act and the list goes on. This year the conversation centered on how does government adopt Public Cloud and how do we do it quickly. Federal Government ICT is worried about becoming irrelevant to their business and rightly so. The Business areas can now use the corporate credit card and procure an as-a-service platform that is fast, The benefits and trends are too hard to ignore: • According to Gartner, Cloud Computing will become the bulk of new IT spend globally by 2016. 1 • Share of IT budget allocated to the cloud increasing from 44.2% in 2013 to 51.3% in 2015. 2 • Microsoft reported in Q4 FY14, 147% cloud growth was fueled by Office 365 and Azure. 3 • Through 2017, 80% of large enterprises will restrict their private cloud data centre services to less than 20% of their total data centre services. 4 • Through 2020, the most common use of cloud services will be a hybrid model combining on- premises and external cloud services. 4 1. “Gartner Says Cloud Computing Will Become the Bulk of New IT Spend by 2016”, Press release, Goa, India - October 24 2013. 2. “Successful cloud partners”, IDC study commissioned by Microsoft5Source:” Foresights Hardware Survey, Q Forrester Research - August 2013. 3. “Microsoft Earnings: Cloud Delivers Growth Yet Again”, www.forbes.com - 23 July 2014 4. Cloud Computing Innovation Key Initiative Overview, www.Gartner.com - 24 April 2014 What are the possible solutions? OPTION 1: A Private Cloud Solution enables public sector organisations to deploy services on-demand, reducing costs and risk while optimising operations. Private cloud enables Government to: • Leverage a cross-platform private cloud solution, and uniformly manage multiple virtualisation platforms and operating systems. secure, has SLA’s and a cost point that agency ICT divisions can only dream of. Prior to the last election the Liberal Party released a Policy for e-Government and the Digital Economy which stated “Light user agencies with insufficient IT scale will move to shared or cloud services”. The Commission of Audit took this one step further recommending the implementation of a ‘cloud first’ strategy (Recommendation 63, http://www.ncoa.gov.au/index.html). The ‘cloud first’ strategy has also been adopted or is about to be adopted by the State Governments. Why is this an issue? Although some view the Commission of Audit as just a set of recommendations that the Federal Government may or may not act on, the intention is clear and more to the point Federal Government business is adopting. The question is will Federal Government ICT be able to react and react quickly enough to remain relevant to their business? The Australian Government is planning a number of whole-of-government systems to support more effective service delivery and enable agencies to focus on higher-value activities that are more aligned with their core missions. The use of cloud services is an important step towards simplifying ICT, and eliminating duplicated and fragmented activities across agencies. Point of View
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Transcript of The Australian Government and the Public Cloud
The Australian Government and the Cloud
Greg Mace, Health and Public Sector Lead Avanade, looks at the options open to government in moving to Cloud post the 2014 Technology in Government EXPO.
The Technology in Government Expo 2014 at the National Convention Centre is an event that not only showcases products and business services from vendors and providers across the globe, but it brings pre-eminent thought leaders in Government together to explore the immediate and challenging issues facing the Public sector at this time.
The Keynotes from prominent Federal Government Bureaucrats were informative but the most interesting part of the Expo was the Private Vs Public Cloud roundtable. I have attended similar roundtables in recent years however, this year, the argument changed.
What has changed?In previous years, it appeared that agencies were trying to establish barriers for public cloud, security, data sovereignty, Privacy Act, Patriot Act and the list goes on. This year the conversation centered on how does government adopt Public Cloud and how do we do it quickly. Federal Government ICT is worried about becoming irrelevant to their business and rightly so. The Business areas can now use the corporate credit card and procure an as-a-service platform that is fast,
The benefits and trends are too hard to ignore: • According to Gartner, Cloud Computing will
become the bulk of new IT spend globally by 2016.1
• Share of IT budget allocated to the cloud increasing from 44.2% in 2013 to 51.3% in 2015.2
• Microsoft reported in Q4 FY14, 147% cloud growth was fueled by Office 365 and Azure.3
• Through 2017, 80% of large enterprises will restrict their private cloud data centre services to less than 20% of their total data centre services.4
• Through 2020, the most common use of cloud services will be a hybrid model combining on- premises and external cloud services.4
1. “Gartner Says Cloud Computing Will Become the Bulk of New IT Spend by 2016”, Press release, Goa, India - October 24 2013.
2. “Successful cloud partners”, IDC study commissioned by Microsoft5Source:” Foresights Hardware Survey, Q Forrester Research - August 2013.
3. “Microsoft Earnings: Cloud Delivers Growth Yet Again”, www.forbes.com - 23 July 2014
4. Cloud Computing Innovation Key Initiative Overview, www.Gartner.com - 24 April 2014
What are the possible solutions?
OPTION 1: A Private Cloud Solution enables public sector organisations to deploy services on-demand, reducing costs and risk while optimising operations. Private cloud enables Government to:• Leverage a cross-platform private cloud
solution, and uniformly manage multiple virtualisation platforms and operating systems.
secure, has SLA’s and a cost point that agency ICT divisions can only dream of.
Prior to the last election the Liberal Party released a Policy for e-Government and the Digital Economy which stated “Light user agencies with insufficient IT scale will move to shared or cloud services”. The Commission of Audit took this one step further recommending the implementation of a ‘cloud first’ strategy (Recommendation 63, http://www.ncoa.gov.au/index.html). The ‘cloud first’ strategy has also been adopted or is about to be adopted by the State Governments.
Why is this an issue?Although some view the Commission of Audit as just a set of recommendations that the Federal Government may or may not act on, the intention is clear and more to the point Federal Government business is adopting.
The question is will Federal Government ICT be able to react and react quickly enough to remain relevant to their business?
The Australian Government is planning a number of whole-of-government systems to support more effective service delivery and enable agencies to focus on higher-value activities that are more aligned with their core missions. The use of cloud services is an important step towards simplifying ICT, and eliminating duplicated and fragmented activities across agencies.
Point of View
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• Go beyond virtualization to a true cloud platform.
• Deliver and manage IT services across traditional, private and public cloud platforms supporting real-world “hybrid" scenarios with a business-oriented self-service portal.
OPTION 2: A Public Cloud Solution that provides agencies with a feature rich service with business continuity and guarantees. Public facing websites, development and test environments are already on the agenda. Agencies should not limit themselves and should consider other workloads especially where speed and scale are important.
The recent changes to the Security Management Guidelines for the risk management of outsourced ICT arrangements are a positive step towards opening up the benefits of Public Cloud services (http://www.protectivesecurity.gov.au/informationsecurity/Documents/AustralianGovernmentInformation SecurityManagementGuidelines.pdf)
Any standalone unclassified applications and workloads are good candidates for public cloud. The use of public cloud should be a target for Application Portfolio Optimisation exercise.
State Government Departments are already leading the way by moving workloads such as email and collaboration to Microsoft Office 365 to remove complexity and provide elasticity as demands on services peak during key events.
OPTION 3: Ideally, to ensure the impact the Federal Government desires an Enterprise Grade Hybrid Cloud is an enviable solution.
Effectively it is a blend of a managed private cloud service set with a public cloud service. With the Hybrid cloud, choosing between the private and the public cloud is no longer an ‘either/or’ proposition. Departments will be able to select private cloud/on premise or public cloud-based services based on the roles and responsibilities or regulatory requirements, workgroups, departments, sub-agencies, and more. The Hybrid cloud is a single portal to consume, design, organise and manage IT services/workloads across cloud environments in a way that is more meaningful to the business.
For example, one of the biggest challenges for today’s Government CIO is data protection. Being able to retain sensitive data behind your firewall whilst taking advantage of the scale and flexibility of the public cloud will be key.
The Hybrid cloud meets this challenge, whether it allows agencies to retain control of data whilst “bursting” to the public cloud for peak computing periods, or increasing the speed at which innovative and more efficient services can be delivered to Australian citizens, partner agencies, industry partners, etc.
ConclusionCloud, whether public, private or hybrid is here. It is mature and the capabilities and features are growing rapidly. Cloud, especially the hyper-scale public clouds, Google, AWS and Microsoft Azure, can provide agencies with industry leading technology that will save time, money, and open up more possibilities for innovation and improve service delivery to the citizens of Australia.
Identifying an appropriate workload to move to the cloud is the first step. The sooner you make a move, the sooner you gain experience. Be relevant to your business, re-focus on your business stakeholder’s needs and reduce spend and attention on ageing and inflexible in-house infrastructure services.
Should you be interested in discussing this content or wish for further information please do not hesitate in contacting Greg Mace at [email protected] or on mobile 0413224862.
Point of View The Australian Government and the Cloud
