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Why Governments Are Shedding IT Infrastructure & Virtualizing Their Data

It’s less politics than it is pragmatism. Government agencies want to move toward a greater cloud presence, but they need to manage mountains of data to get there. At every level of government; federal, state and local, the pressure is on to reduce expenses and improve efficiency. Cloud is seen as a great way to help do it. At the same time, services need to function effectively. And government agencies, along with the public they serve, require easy, direct, and agile information access. And the mountain grows.

Security is also a big concern in any cloud move and every data breach is national news. So, essential data must be both available and protected. Secure and carefully managed. The problem is, at every level, government efficiency is hampered by a long standing approach that saves nearly every bit of data. Multiple copies of every bit. Advanced efforts to achieve efficiency are hampered by outmoded technology and conditioning that hoards data copies like a dragon hoards gold.

govt_imgIt’s complicated. But copy data virtualization can make it much less so. Data virtualization eliminates unneeded data copies and makes data more accessible at the same time. It can substantially reduce expensive and inflexible legacy data management tools. And, it can better satisfy citizens’ demand for on-line services, Freedom of Information responsiveness, public safety, transportation and regulatory compliance. It serves all interests. It makes the unmanageable, manageable.

We’ve seen government IT operations apply copy data virtualization to significantly reduce copies and costs while delivering better service levels. They’ve transformed service models and created a new data management edge. With a single platform they support application development, test, backup, disaster recovery, analytics, archive and more. They get better data control and assure better security. Data virtualization is a form of digital transformation means they can more readily make the move to cloud services because there are fewer copies to take along.

Implementation of data virtualization has already demonstrated how governments can effectively communicate, and coordinate across agencies and constituencies at every level. Before and after results are compelling.

Before:

  • Dozens of unneeded data copies
  • Unmet cloud services targets
  • Missed backup windows
  • Slow data recovery
  • Untested backup/disaster recovery
  • Slow & complicated application development
  • Expensive primary storage used for redundant copy data
  • Multiple complex systems creating and managing copy data
  • Copy data growth straining IT budgets
  • Complicated data center consolidation struggles
After:              

  • Individual Virtual Data Master Copies
  • New virtual data cloud capabilities
  • Instant backup
  • Instant restore
  • Redundant copy data elimination
  • DR tested and demonstrated
  • Self-service DevOps with immediate full-copy production data access
  • Efficient data movement & migration
  • Fine tuned and tested SLAs
  • Ease of Use
  • Reliable service and support
  • Single platform data management for physical and virtual environments
  • Greatly reduced storage footprints

Copy data virtualization has demonstrated reductions in raw data storage by an average of 90%. Data is both protected and immediately available for application development, analytics and freedom of information reporting. It’s available when needed for immediate recovery. And there’s way less of it to manage. See what Actifio does and how copy data management helps.

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