For municipal agencies, cloud may be the best technology to come along. That’s because cloud isn’t really a technology; it’s a way of accessing technology. Cloud gives cash-strapped, technically challenged municipalities an easy way to leverage the latest technology while achieving several benefits residents and constituents will appreciate:
- Cost management. No one wants to see their taxes go up, so governments are perpetually strapped for cash. Technology budgets are tight. Cloud offers governments a better way to manage technical expenditures, paying only for their resources when they are used, rather than investing in spare capacity that may never be needed. In addition, there’s no more need to throw out aging, obsolete hardware.
- Security. In smaller communities, the expertise needed to ensure on premises equipment, applications, and data are properly secured may be hard to come by. Cloud gives these locations access to the well-trained security professionals employed by the cloud provider.
- Expert support. The cloud provider’s expertise isn’t limited to security. Municipalities that struggle with infrastructure support benefit from the experience and service offered by the cloud provider.
- Advanced technology. Cloud offers municipalities a cost effective way to experiment with new technology. Platform as a Service offerings make many specialized products easily available, offering support as well as free trial periods. The hesitation about trying new technology, due to cost and lack of expertise, is eliminated.
- Insight into data. Because cloud makes it easy to share resources, siloed data becomes accessible to multiple departments. New kinds of analyses can be run, generating more insight, and new applications can be developed, providing better service.
- Flexibility. One of the biggest challenges in government is being responsive to changes. With cloud’s low-commitment, pay-as-you-go model, there are many fewer obstacles to responding to changes in technology. Platform-as-a-Service provides many tools that make it faster to adopt new software development methods, making it easier to implement new applications and provide new services.
- Scalability. One important aspect of flexibility needs to be called out on its own; that’s the ability to scale services to meet demand. Because cloud can scale up or down, plus vertically or horizontally, using cloud provides municipal agencies the ability to match their offerings to demand and provide much better levels of service.
What’s your excuse for not using cloud, and does it outweigh these reasons that your municipality should be using cloud? As a Microsoft Partner, Prescient Solutions is expert in Azure cloud. We work with municipalities in the Chicago and Schaumburg area to provide cloud support as well as comprehensive on-site, remote, and shared IT support services. Contact us to learn more about why you should start using cloud to improve the IT services of your municipal agency.
