J.R.R. Tolkien used to say that “the greatest adventure is what lies ahead”. For many state and local government CIOs, that means venturing to the cloud to better support hybrid work environments, provide new digital services for citizens, and optimize operations. So the question is no longer “if?”, but rather “how?” and “when?”. Let’s have a quick look at how Extreme can support you in that journey!
Whether the motivation is to reduce costs, modernize services and applications, share information and resources more efficiently, enable employee productivity, or optimize operations, most government bodies and agencies have either already completed their journey to the cloud, are in the middle of it, or are laying plans and charting their route for such move. And the key part of that transformation are IT networks.
Implementing a cloud-managed network infrastructure brings tangible benefits for the government sector, especially if we consider its obligation on behalf of taxpayers to be cautious and responsible with the budget. For instance, IT departments no longer have to purchase, deploy, and maintain computing hardware and software in-house.
Cloud services are also quick and easy to deploy and scale as needed. This is especially important if we consider the fact that, according to Extreme’s study, more than half (54%) state and local government agencies worldwide have experienced issues with network or application availability and reliability over the last 5 years.
Why does the government sector consider cloud-managed networking?
To better understand cloud managed networking adoption in the public sector, Extreme Networks has surveyed more than 200 global state and local government agencies, half of which coming from Europe. While only 15% currently manage their networks from the cloud, an additional 41% plan to do so by 2026.
Here is what the IT engineers, directors/managers of IT and CIOs in question have identified as their primary reasons:
- Agility (68%)
- Access to resources (54%)
- Lower cost (46%)
- Ease of Management (43%)
- Improved security (39%)
- Network and application availability (36%)
- Better data backup (32%)
- Lower staffing needs (32%)
- Improved user experience (29%)
- Analytics data (25%)
Moving to the cloud at your own pace
Cloud-based networking solutions, not unlike their on-premise equivalents, require careful preparation, vendor selection, resource planning, and strong leadership. This is why government organizations must develop a sound cloud migration strategy that will help them reach their goals in an optimal and cost-effective way, with as little disruptions to the operations as possible.
No two cloud migration plans are ever built the same. Some things can be moved to the cloud, some will always need to remain on premises. That is why here at Extreme Networks, we support our customers on their journey to the cloud at their own pace, in whatever model they wish to employ.
At the center of this approach lies a complete, core to edge cloud solution that's simple, secure, and flexible. The basic gist is we're optimizing the technology backbone with the legacy migration piece, with a centralized cloud management design that allows for second to none management of the overall cloud experience.
We don't force our customers to make the decision at purchase. You won’t hear us asking: "Are you going to be a cloud customer or an on-prem customer?". Instead, our licensing model allows you to move the equipment to the cloud and put it back on-prem as you like. Additionally, our flexible and cloud-agnostic deployment models including public, private, and hybrid cloud help you on your digital transformation journey at whatever pace you're interested in moving in!
But don’t just take our word for it!
Over the last few years, several communities worldwide have begun implementing cloud technology and cloud-management strategies. Whether it was to help with their smart community initiatives, support better safety and citizen experiences, or a mix of reasons, learn about how they created new ways to achieve better outcomes for their community!
The municipality of Borås Stad (Sweden)
With the gradual growth of IT infrastructure, access points and connected devices, the municipality of Borås Stad was looking for new ways to reduce the complexity and operating costs related to network management, as well as leverage actionable data and insights from network usage to further optimize and improve user experiences.
To that end, Borås Stad decided to fully embrace cloud-managed networking by implementing the award-winning ExtremeCloud IQ platform.
The City of Breda (The Netherlands)
The city of Breda has always aimed to be a frontrunner in digital government in order to transform the way it interacts with its residents and business. To that end, the community was looking for new ways to improve its digital service offerings.
Ultimately, the city implemented ExtremeCloud IQ – Site Engine as its end-to-end management tool. They have been able to make more data-driven decisions and simplify IT workflows to save time, money, and effort on their digital transformation efforts.
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