Cloud Computing – Private cloud with Windows Azure Appliance

Government IT departments are undergoing many transformative changes today, including initiatives to better serve citizens and employees with more open, participatory systems. For instance, the www.data.gov.uk website is making an ever-increasing volume of data available for all to view and analyse. The end goal is to help citizens better understand the efforts and results of government.

Putting data into the cloud can be a secure, reliable, and painless way to share valuable information with citizens. The cloud can give public sector organisations secure, web-based access to databases—without the need for additional hardware and software investments. However, the majority of public sector organisations are not yet ready to transition to a full cloud solution and need the additional security of a private cloud implementation.

Which brings me to the main reason for this blog posting – to make sure you are aware of the recently announced Microsoft Windows Azure Platform Appliance. The Windows Azure platform appliance is a turnkey cloud platform that Government customers can deploy in their own datacentre, across hundreds to thousands of servers. The appliance solution comprises Windows Azure, SQL Azure and a Microsoft-specified configuration of network, storage and server hardware.

Customers who deploy the appliance in their own datacentres to create private clouds get the benefit of maintaining physical control of location and regulatory compliance of the data the platform processes, while taking advantage of Microsoft’s existing cloud services.

Posted by Ian