UK public sector: Hybrid cloud is here to stay, so how do we make it work?

Cloud adoption and data migration are intimidating tasks for any organization. Multiply that challenge to encompass the whole of the UK’s public sector – thousands of siloed and/or interdependent systems that stretch back decades in the making – and you can appreciate the scale and complexity of the challenge that our government faces in achieving its National Data Strategy ambitions and “cloud appropriate” policy.

A lot of industry discussions about future strategy position cloud and legacy systems as almost opposing forces, which has unwittingly compelled IT teams to organize resources in the same, disconnected way. Similarly, it is often assumed that a migration process can simply move applications and data straight to the cloud, and considerations such as cost, service levels, and security are put on the back burner.

In reality, some systems cannot simply move to the cloud. Some of them may never move. From recent studies, we know that the majority of public sector organizations will work in a mixed private and public cloud environment for many years to come. So we’re left with a situation that demands more thought about how we can feasibly bridge these two worlds.

At NetApp we’ve been exploring these challenges in the context of our public sector – consulting with departments, exploring options, and architecting potential “stepping stones” that make the journey to cloud more technically and financially viable. We’re on a mission to provide flexible and robust storage foundations and hybrid cloud data controls to meet the objectives of departments for the next 3 to 5 years. If we get these right, we could see significant impact on both public services and cost efficiency for the treasury and tax-payer alike.

To find out more, download our new white paper, Cloud migration for the UK public sector: Bridging old and new one step at a time.