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Cloud Computing – San Francisco CIO on Transitioning 23000 employees to the Cloud

  • Artigo

One of our aims with our blog is to bring you relevant examples and experience from public sector organisations around the world .  The real world experience of other public sector CIOs is particularly valuable which is why today’s focus is on an interview with Jon Walton, Chief Information Officer for the City and County of San Francisco to obtain his perspective on transitioning to the cloud.

In May 2011, San Francisco announced that it would migrate its 23,000 employees onto Microsoft Exchange Online to replace its seven different e-mail systems currently in use across 60 departments. In this recent interview with Jon Walton you can get his perspective on why the journey to the cloud is much more than simply about saving costs on ICT.  Other considerations and benefits that Jon Walton cites are:

  • Speed of implementation, scalability and disaster readiness of cloud computing
  • Exchange Online provides on and offline capability to provide e-mail availability at all times
  • Opportunity to move beyond email and transition data, applications and communications to the cloud

Another key aspect of any organisation’s journey to the cloud that Jon Walton addresses in this interview is the decision-making process.  He makes clear that stakeholder buy-in is essential and in his own words, “Even though it was time-consuming and painstaking, we intentionally had a very open and transparent process that involved stakeholders from all departments across the city and county, and I think that's been a key to our success.”

You can read the full interview with Jon Walton, CIO of the City and County of San Francisco here and more about Office 365 here.

Posted by Ian