The reality is, there isn’t that much difference between operating a data center within a corporate environment and managing a publicly-funded data center. If you’re in the public sector, understanding opportunities available via data center outsourcing can boost your performance in meaningful ways.   

Anyone responsible for operations within a federal or state agency, municipality or the military faces accountability to myriad “bosses” with agendas and priorities that often conflict. While that can be an issue within large private enterprise companies as well, it’s far more pronounced in the public arena.

Reducing the size of government has become the new mantra, but constituents expect to receive more services, more responsively, with absolutely reliable protections in place to secure personal or other sensitive data.

Public oversight has morphed into intense public scrutiny. Every detail of your agency’s or department’s financing and work is open to question and second-guessing. And money is scarce. Outsourcing can help you meet those service expectations, in a timely manner and on budget.

Data center outsourcing can help do more with less.

Rising operations costs are a persistent issue with every business, but the public sector is feeling the pinch at least as much, if not more. Every data center manager has the same goal: to spend less while sustaining or, better yet, improving and expanding services and quality. Funding sources may differ for public entities, but the need to reduce costs is universal for every IT operation, regardless of size, type or scope.

Strategic outsourcing can streamline virtually any data center operations, putting the latest technologies and processes at your disposal while helping you control costs.

All the benefits of data center outsourcing that accrue to private businesses are available to the public sector as well.

It’s not easy to keep up. Information technology is rapidly evolving, and user needs seem to be constantly expanding and evolving, too. The right outsourcing plan can address all these critical IT issues within your organization:

• Staffing and related direct and indirect labor, training, benefits costs. It’s tough to find qualified replacements for your retiring IT personnel, because the pool is diminishing and third-party providers are snapping up the best candidates. Outsourcing puts the best of the best to work for you.
• Flexibility and scalability. These capabilities are essential to functional survival in a fast-changing and unpredictable environment. Outsourcing also enables you to convert fixed costs into variable costs, greatly enhancing your ability to forecast needs as well as costs and to easily expand or contract services as necessary.
• Confident handling of extremely sensitive financial and personal data securely and safely. Aside from protecting day-to-day transactions, outsourcing can boost your disaster recovery planning, putting execution components reliably in place to assure continuity. That’s literally life-and-death critical for public entities responsible for emergency services, from first responders to communications and other support teams.
• Governance protocols and procedures and other controls. Private companies have to meet the latest industry standards, but public sector data centers have to meet governmental regulations as well. Outsourcing can assure compliance.
• Getting out of the IT business. Doing less with more means doing away with extraneous workloads. Whatever your public sector role, IT is a support system, not the focal point. Data center outsourcing can allow you to stay up-to-date with IT functionality and best practices while redirecting personnel time toward more productive activities -- serving the public and elected or appointed decision-makers.

All this applies, even you’re Mainframe-reliant.  

Even the largest public sector entities that commonly handle vast quantities of transactions are great candidates for data center outsourcing. Streamlined, more cost-effective solutions aren’t dependent on size, so there’s a long-term outsourcing scenario that matches the scale and complexity of your data management needs, no matter how widespread or technically complicated they are.

Data center outsourcing can ensure you’re operating in the most businesslike manner, bringing you political as well as functional benefits. 

Photo credit: Cag244 via Wikimedia Commons