Cloud by consensus?

There is no question the public sector is facing some of the toughest challenges it has ever faced - and so now needs to make some difficult decisions on whether to accelerate or decelerate the modernisation trend. Accelerating it will require investment, but most ICT managers in the public sector know it is the only way to save money.

That at least is view of Jan Duffy, EMEA Research Director of analysts, IDC, speaking at an HP-sponsored roundtable discussion in London this week on how IT is powering our communities. She has just completed a large survey of public sector trends across Western Europe and found that the common key business drivers are regulatory compliance, security, and cost management.

There is a common need to reduce investment in IT, and she is already seeing a flat spend on technology. There is also a need for much more flexibility in the systems, coupled with better IT skills, and a now common trend is that it is increasingly impossible for internal IT departments to keep up with developments, she told participants at the event, organised by supplier HP:

“One difference is that outsourcing is more accepted in UK than in other European countries – particularly for IT – so the public sector here is starting to look at a hybrid model of resourcing, and a hybrid model of funding. ”

That does mean an acceptance of technology developments and Duffy noted that there is now widespread implementation of virtualisation and the beginnings of serious implementation of Cloud-based service delivery. Cloud by consensus?

According to Geoff Connell, Divisional Director for ICT at the London Borough of Newham and simultaneously Head of Business Systems at the London Borough of Havering, there is now general agreement amongst the local government community that in five years most services will indeed be Cloud-provided:

“But there are still many different opinions on how to get there from here. Even with email, there has been problems in getting services working, as different bodies manage their data in different ways. There is also much discussion on what is an appropriate level of security - and all of this has to be balanced against cost. ”

This, as Mike Day, Director of Information Services at Nottingham Trent University, is the “double whammy” of trying to improve services while cutting costs. That is why one area he is looking at is the development of shared services as a way of saving costs. This is an opportunity HP is starting to develop with real service offerings, according to Graham Lay, Vice President of HP’s Enterprise Services for the UK and Ireland.

He talked about his firm’s recent introduction of a public sector implementation of its WorkPlace360 service which was originally aimed at very large enterprises. Now, public sector bodies will be able to sign up for a portion of this new resource, WorkPlace360G. WorkPlace360 Services use a subscription-based approach to provide standard desktop hardware and software configurations matching user needs.

Organisations assign standard profiles to each user or user category and HP deploys fully provisioned systems, including support, update, and refresh. Barnet-Enfield Mental Health Trust is the first customer, but others are already in negotiation with HP, he claimed.

There was a strong feeling at the session that IT service implementation now has to be much quicker. So there now has to be changes in the way services are procured, particularly in the area of shared services. The need is for service to be available instantly because events happen more quickly and users want to see things happen far faster.

An additional problem the panel identified is that most public sectors are still basing their data storage on technologies that are 20 years old or more. These technologies were sufficient for structured data but now there is a strong trend towards a very unstructured data world. Day observed that this is now being added to by students operating a `bring your own technology’ model:

“Most now come fully equipped and it does mean that the security boundaries have to be re-drawn to accommodate this. ”

Connell said this was also increasingly common in local government, where he already supports iPads:

“So the need now is to create the environment that facilitates it rather than just tolerates it. The need is to build flexible environments that can work with existing personal technologies, and also allow additions easily and quickly. The need is to be as device agnostic as possible. ”

Day also observed that there now needs to be a good deal of deregulation in the public setcor so that the private sector can supply solutions more readily, especially where it comes to Cloud services. HP’s Professional Service specialist, Michael Garrett, pointed out that as public sector organisations get into a multi-sourced environment so they will need to organise themselves in order to source and consume services from a number of suppliers:

“This is a level of complexity for departments that has not really been considered yet. ”

There was a general feeling that when it comes to the Cloud and security, the one thing not needed was a single Cloud contract. There will always be a need for different systems to help maintain separation and security. What has to be learned here is the process of governance of services in the Cloud, and learn it in areas that are not critical.

Connell observed that security is now one area where local authorities are collaborating well. But there is also a need to have collaboration across sectors, not just authority to authority or university to university. Increasing, different sectors now need to collaborate, as Day observed:

“I have been seeing an increasing need to collaborate with local authorities in Nottingham area. ”

The ever-present issue, of course, is cost savings, and Connell is already seeing benefits here:

“We’re already 20% down on our costs from last year and we know where the next savings are coming from, in areas such as shared resources. We are already starting to see savings in the area of ERP where authorities share the same Cloud resources. ”

Mike Day concurred with this view:

“We are currently spending 70% of our IT budget on keeping the lights on. But it was 80% and the target is to get it down to 50%.”

Lay also pointed to savings in the PaaS area where, for example, developers can spin up development environments for new projects, do the work then decommission them. The resources can then be used for other work until an upgrade is needed, when the development environment can be reconstituted:

“ But it is not a physical systems environment that has to be maintained and paid for. ”

The corollary to cost issues is any potential ROI and it was acknowledged that with the Cloud this can be a problem. Going to the Cloud can change the internal accounting model, moving from it a capital model to a revenue model. It is also difficult assess any RoI (return on investment) because it is still new.

But it was pointed out that the Cloud does mean customers no longer need to invest to cope with peaks in demand that exceed those planned. These can be accommodated and paid for very easily. As Duffy pointed out:

“What users will also get is not always a cost reduction with the Cloud, but they will get better resilience, reliability and performance. ”

As side issue of RoI, Connell pointed out that the key factor with Cloud services is the more it becomes a commodity the more it can cover the cost reduction needs without to much effort on his part:

“And the more that happens the more it frees me up to think about and plan new services that are required or could be valuable. ”