Many Australian government agencies have already taken advantage of the products and services that are offered by leading Cloud providers and are currently enjoying a number of its key benefits.
If your public sector organisation has yet to make the move to the Cloud, you may be wondering what services are available and why they may be of interest to you.
To answer these questions, we are going to take a brief look at the most useful Cloud services offered by the major service providers in Australia, from the perspective of the public sector.
Public sector Cloud services in Australia
As you would expect, the Cloud service providers that provide the most services and support for government agencies are the biggest and most well-established in the industry.
AWS Australia, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud have all made efforts to tailor their services for the public sector, both in Australia and in other countries across the globe. Other Cloud service providers that offer solutions targeted specifically at government entities include IBM, Salesforce and Huddle.
Many of the Cloud services that are of interest to the public sector are the same as those that private sector organisations have enthusiastically adopted in recent years.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
With SaaS, the applications that your organisation uses on a daily basis are hosted in the Cloud and maintained by your Cloud service provider. This allows your in-house IT team to focus on new developments and enhancements.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
With a highly capable platform that provides numerous tools and resources, your software team can develop and deploy new applications and IT services more rapidly.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Highly scalable storage and compute resources, along with a global network, can be accessed on demand by public sector entities, allowing them to budget for future IT requirements more accurately.
In addition to these services, Cloud providers such as AWS offer an infrastructure that meets the stringent security requirements of government organisations in Australia and elsewhere.
Security is, of course, a major concern for the public sector and has given some government IT administrators pause for thought when considering a move to the Cloud.
However, with the data protection and security measures that the biggest Cloud platforms have in place, it is fair to say they offer government agencies an IT infrastructure environment that is as safe and secure as those they may currently be using.
Benefits for the public sector
Similar to commercial organisations, those in the public sector can look forward to potential cost savings, a more agile development environment and a more flexible IT infrastructure when moving to a Cloud platform in Australia.
For those agencies that have yet to migrate to the Cloud, the question is not whether, but when, they will do so. On-demand services and resources, a highly secure network and no up-front expenses make Cloud platforms a very attractive proposition for all types of public sector organisations.
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