It was recently announced that the Government Publishing Office (GPO)—the agency responsible for publishing congressional and federal information—had no disaster recovery plan in place. Without one, the GPO would potentially be unable to restore valuable data or support business functions should a service disruption or natural disaster occur. Our CTO Grant Kirkwood chatted with GCN to outline three ways the cloud can lessen barriers that have often prevented agencies from upgrading their systems.
While traditional on-premises DR solutions have been expensive to install, upgrade, and maintain, and are potentially vulnerable to the same shocks as the systems they backstop, the cloud is not. The factors that make the cloud attractive for enterprise use also make it a perfect fit for government agencies:
- Affordability: Only use, and pay for, compute and storage resources when needed. Much less expensive to spin up recovery environments in the event of a catastrophe.
- Responsiveness: Automation in the cloud and service provider disaster recovery options mean those systems can be switched on at the click of a button, rather than requiring arduous effort from an internal IT team.
- Security: The cloud is more secure than traditional, on-premises systems, and is able to enforce compliance standards and manage systems centrally.
Read the full article here.