How to Buy Cloud for Your Public Sector Organization

Buying cloud computing services takes different skills and strategies than buying traditional IT. Are you ready to move to the cloud but looking for practical guidance? Not sure where to start? We’re here to help you select the right acquisition approach for your agency.

As your agency is considering moving to the cloud, there are important topics to consider, which include justifying your move to AWS, organizational and cultural implications, purchasing strategies, architectural considerations, and further optimization to enable innovation and save costs down the line.

1. Scope the project in order to justify your decision: Early planning, communication, and buy-in are essential. Understanding the motivation (time, cost, availability, etc.) is key and will be different for each organization.
2. Map out your acquisition strategies: Well-designed procurement strategies and cloud-centric contract vehicles will make a difference. Getting procurement ‘right,’ will lead to a portfolio of cloud technology and services that truly realizes the benefits of cloud computing.
3. Structure the deal to save costs down the line: The shift from buying hardware to accessing cloud services makes technology faster, easier and less expensive. With AWS, you can use the spot market, save when you reserve, and only pay for what you use. Structure your deal to make use of On-Demand Instances, Reserved Instances, Dedicated Instances, and Spot Instances.
4. Consider implementation strategies to help you get more from your cloud deployment: When choosing to take advantage of the cloud, it is important to consider creating a cloud-first policy for your organization, which requires the consideration of cloud before taking an on-premises approach.
5. Organize to move into production: Define and identify organizational structures and roles, required competencies, competency gaps, training needs, and staffing and organizational changes required to build an agile IT organization that is capable of effective cloud adoption. An organizational model that is optimized for cloud adoption should be established for the delivery and operation of cloud-based solutions.

Discover more details about the steps you need to take to migrate your government or education institution to the cloud – from design to implementation.

Learn more about acquisition and procurement strategies at the AWS Public Sector Summit June 12-14 in Washington, DC.