OREANDA-NEWS. June 21, 2016. The public sector (government, education and non-profit) has been experiencing its own variety of digital disruption due to initiatives to lower costs, consolidate data centers, and meet compliance, audit and privacy requirements. And according to IDC, government cloud spending will nearly double from \\$6.66 billion in 2015 to \\$11.46 billion in 2019, thanks in part to the Obama administration’s 2011 Cloud First policy.

But the public sector needs more than money when it comes to cloud. With cybersecurity, access rights and data sovereignty regulations putting more pressure on the entire industry, greater interconnection to innovative cloud solutions is needed.

This week, IT leaders from public and private sectors will be attending the AWS Public Sector Summit to meet on these and other issues that impact public IT policy and practice. Equinix will be there at booth #802 to showcase our Data Migration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) solution. This offering, as described below, is built on Platform Equinix™ products and services, AWS Direct Connect, and a number of our cloud-connected storage (e.g., NetApp) and managed service (e.g., 1901 Group, Day1 Solutions) ecosystem partners.

Assessment and Design

The first step toward data migration with AWS is a workload, application and architecture assessment and design by Equinix Professional Services (EPS). Our EPS team will do a complete inventory of an IT organization’s workloads and applications and help determine what will live in AWS, versus what will stay on-premises, and recommend implementation plans and blueprints. They will also provide interconnection solutions that not only deliver high security and reliability, but also high performance and low latency when moving data to the cloud.

Secure Connectivity and Configuration

Next, EPS will help establish a private, long-line connection to AWS via AWS Direct Connect in an Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center, and then move cloud-ready applications and workloads directly to AWS. This provides a secure, direct and high-performance connection for developing and testing applications on AWS.

Hybrid Enablement and Migration

Higher risk workloads and applications require a hybrid architecture, where mission-critical applications remain on-premises and less sensitive workloads migrate to the cloud: For example, going from private, on-premises NetApp storage to NetApp cloud-connected storage via Equinix Cloud Exchange™ or AWS Direct Connect. Sensitive data and applications are controlled and compliant, and AWS compute and storage services are accessed via high-performance, low-latency connections.

Managed Services

Post migration to the cloud, you can choose from several managed service providers (MSPs) in the Amazon Partner Network (APN) ecosystem that specialize in public sector and can operate the hybrid cloud environment. With this cloud-based managed service business model, IT organizations can turn their CAPEX into more cost-effective OPEX.

The Data Migration with AWS solution enables public sector agencies and organizations to realize improved application performance and control, mitigate risk and realize a more simplified end-to-end experience.

Northumberland County’s Data Migration to AWS via Hybrid

Northumberland County managers had ongoing flood management and protection concerns around its data center, given the county’s location by the Susquehanna River, a well-known flood zone in Pennsylvania. They were also concerned about the county’s aging, legacy IT infrastructure, which was at 80% capacity. They deployed a fully managed hybrid cloud offering using NetApp Private Storage for Amazon Web Services (AWS), hosted at Equinix, with a direct connection to AWS via the Equinix Cloud Exchange.

By leveraging a solution that enabled migration to a hybrid architecture, Northumberland immediately realized the following benefits:

  • Increased flexibility and scalability
  • Enhanced security and control
  • Improved performance and efficiency
  • Greater protection, for less cost

“By utilizing Amazon Web Services with NetApp Private Storage in an Equinix data center, we have a much better and more secure data center than we could ever afford on our own,” County Commissioner Steven Bridy said. “My advice to any municipality is to take advantage of a hybrid cloud sooner rather than later to help ensure the best use of taxpayer dollars.”

Read the full Northumberland County Case Study.

And don’t forget to visit us at AWS Public Sector Summit, June 20-21 at Washington Marriott Wardman Park. Equinix is at booth #802 and NetApp is at booth #501.