Government agencies and institutions are taking a road trip to the cloud but who has the map?

Government agencies and institutions, including:
• Police stations;
• State colleges;
• Our nation’s capital;
• Federal, state and local agencies; and
• Higher education institutions
are buried by regulations, pressed by tight budgets and limited by legacy systems. To bypass these issues, many are taking a detour and heading to the cloud.

October is in full swing, and with that we welcome cooler temps, changing leaves, Halloween, and  importantly, National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM).

In its 13^th year, NCASM was created to raise awareness about cyber security.  The annual campaign features weekly cyber security themes designed to educate and engage the public and private sectors.

“Cloud” has been a buzzword within the industry for the past decade. In fact, some even claim it’s “old news.” And while others may be looking to the next big thing, visionaries in the space view the cloud movement as the first step of a monumental shift in both the IT industry and the world. This shift is driven by connections with other waves of innovation as established technologies (such as mobility) continue to evolve and new movements like the Internet of Things (IoT) continue to rise. Cloud will play a major role in fueling efficiency, profitability and collaboration in the very near future.

In my recent posts, I’ve focused on initiatives in the Federal space and steps Avnet Government Solutions is taking to protect Uncle Sam’s goods. As summer wraps up I wanted to drill down on the other side of the public sector. Last month we attended XChange SLED University and then road tripped to the Sunshine State for NASCIO a couple weeks ago. The state, local and education (SLED) industry provides a lot of white space and the time to capitalize is now. But first, let’s take a closer look at what SLED organizations are doing to shake things up.

Tech Data just announced an expanded agreement with Veeam Software, a leading provider of availability, backup, replication and virtualization management solutions. Adding Veeam to Tech Data Cloud’s portfolio will enable solution providers in the United States to offer Veeam’s Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) solutions.

What does DevOps look like? For one healthcare company, DevOps wasn’t pretty. Sure it had a more mature set of processes than competitors and for the most part its IT environment worked, but there were still a lot of manual processes that made its IT environment complex – it wasn’t scalable or user-friendly.

Did you know that some businesses use cloud seeding – and I do mean actual clouds – to improve business by modifying the weather? It sounds like something out of a comic book, but really it’s much less menacing. Airports, for example, may sometimes do this to reduce fog in the area, and some ski resorts use it occasionally to induce snowfall.

As many organizations look to transform to a recurring revenue model in order to improve revenue predictability and reduce financing stress, there are factors that should be taken into account in order to make a smooth and successful transition.

Here’s some information you may already know but haven’t necessarily quantified: buying enterprise software or hardware is not where the spending stops… it’s just the beginning.

If you think a car is four wheels and an engine, then a Porsche and a Hyundai are the same. When you are looking to purchase a car, you consider different variables and attributes like performance and price. And, while a Bugatti might have the best absolute performance, at $1M it’s arguably not the best price-performance.