This round table, held in association with Eduserv, will address the question...
How can civil service organisations minimise the risk and maximise the benefits of ambitious cloud migrations?
With the Cabinet Office’s ‘cloud first’ agenda restricting many non-cloud procurements, departments are being both pushed and pulled towards cloud services. But many IT professionals, unused to the technology and aware of the horror stories, are wary of substantial migrations. Many government departments and agencies have dipped a toe into cloud services, moving individual business processes such as HR systems and specific services onto shared, remote servers. Such incremental migrations often do create useful savings – but they can’t realise the full potential benefits of the cloud, either in organisational agility or in cost reductions.
When organisations move the entirety of their internal IT systems and external functionality into the cloud, they can yield immense benefits. Purchasing IT as a service rather than deploying their own hardware and staff, they avoid unused capacity and asset depreciation, cut maintenance costs, and focus their employees on strategic work. Cloud also lends itself to the short-term, flexible contracts favoured under the government’s IT Strategy, enabling organisations to respond to change.
Some of the topics up for discussion will include:
- Which kinds of IT functionality are best suited to cloud, and which are more complex to shift across?
- What are the most common problems in cloud migration, and how can they be addressed?
- How can organisations extricate themselves from existing contracts and complex legacy systems?
- How can civil service bodies find the right level of security in the cloud?
- What are the public relations risks around cloud migration?
- How can officials ensure that migrations realise the anticipated savings and operational benefits?
Lunch will be provided for all attendees.
If you are interested in attending this discussion please RSVP to Laura Thompson on 020 7593 5621 or please email roundtables@civilservicenetwork.com