On-Premise Cloud Computing

About the Program

Category: Information Technology (Best in Category)

Year: 2014

Hendry County, a rural county located in sunny SW Florida, also sits in the midst of “Hurricane Alley”. One challenge we’ve faced in adverse economic conditions is to implement operationally fluid technology while maintaining fiscal responsibility. In 2013, under new leadership of the County Administrator and Information Technology Director, Hendry County Government IT was challenged to re-architect existing technologies and exceed capabilities of neighboring counties, at a fraction of the budget. Staff rose to the challenge by modifying all existing strategies for backups, server virtualization, application delivery, disaster preparedness and continuation of operations in event of disaster. Projects were successfully implemented to remove expensive 3rd party cloud data backups, establish a Disaster Recovery (DR) site at the Hendry County Emergency Operations Center (EOC) by utilizing existing physical hardware to implement a virtual cloud for 100% of server infrastructure, and replicate servers, applications and databases from primary datacenter in near real-time format. The success of these projects allowed all aging EOC infrastructure to be decommissioned and prepared Hendry County for virtual application delivery to the 40+ thin client terminals located in the EOC, and computing devices county wide. As a result of implementing on premise cloud software, IT can “flip the switch” and move all datacenter operations from the primary site to DR site in less than 2 minutes, while continuing to serve applications for users physically working in the office, or anywhere in the world.