Tag: business resiliency

Recent events, from public sector cyberattacks and severe weather events to the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, have revealed that many educational institutions, as well as regional and local governments, are not fully prepared to respond to these incidents. At the same time, large-scale disruptive events illustrate how important it is for public sector organizations to respond rapidly to keep essential services running as well as quickly pivot to offer new services. In an IDC survey of 2,000 U.S. residents in September 2020, 31% said they would like to continue virtual government services as a replacement for in-person interactions, while another IDC survey of U.S. teachers revealed that 38% expect a growth in hybrid or remote learning to be a lasting change.

The business resiliency framework uses the five most common business goals government and education organizations face: real-time data analytics, business continuity, process and systems modernization, workforce enablement and learning, and constituent engagement. Learn how public sector organizations can apply the business resiliency framework and cloud technology to close various workforce, data, and analytics gaps.

This year, global health and economy challenged government, education, nonprofit, and health organizations to rethink operations. With a focus on their mission, organizations quickly shifted to better and more quickly serve their constituents, students, and customers. Many took advantage of ways to innovate and consider adopting the cloud. AWS looked for ways to help these organizations, educating them on the power of the cloud—no matter where they were on their cloud journey—as well as sharing inspiring stories from their peers. Here’s what we learned.

Nobody wants to lose data—and setting a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) to zero makes this intent clear. Customers with government mission-critical systems often need to meet this requirement, since any amount of data loss will cause harm. RPO covers both resilience and disaster recovery—everything from the loss of an individual physical disk to an entire data center. Existing systems support RPO zero through a combination of architecture patterns (including resilient messaging) and on-premises legacy databases. Frequently interpreted as a database or storage requirement, providing for RPO zero requires thinking about the entire system. To do so, you can use AWS services and architecture patterns, which provide resilience to failure with clustering, auto scaling, and failover across multiple data centers within one region.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems handle everything from accounting to marketing, finances to inventory, human resources to customer relations, and more. Colleges and universities commit significant infrastructure and personnel resources to run and manage these vital applications. But shifts in technology adoption, reduced availability of skilled labor, and increased economic pressures push colleges and universities to assess the return on their material ERP system investments. One way higher education institutions realize additional return on their scarce resources is by using cloud technologies. After Arizona State University (ASU) moved to AWS, the university was able to effectively allocate resources to benefit its students and solve operational problems that would otherwise require additional investment. Check out three benefits higher education institutions can recognize by moving ERP systems to the cloud.

Last month, the AWS Public Sector Blog covered building business resiliency, upskilling the next generation of cloud talent, machine learning in college sports, and more. Check out the latest episode of The Brief to learn more about business resiliency, and check out the other top stories linked below.

In October 2018, the Florida panhandle was hit by Hurricane Michael, a Category 5 storm that set a new record for the strongest hurricane on record to make landfall in the area. Florida State University (FSU) already understood the need for a long-term continuity of operations plan, and the devastation Michael wrought on the surrounding areas solidified how critical a disaster recovery (DR) service is to their overall operations. Disaster-recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) is the business world’s advanced solution to unexpected disruption. Whether the threat comes from natural disaster, technical failure, human error, or malicious action, the result is still unplanned downtime and the need for recovery. Learn how FSU designed and launched their DRaaS solution on an accelerated timeline while optimizing costs.

Over the past few months, one of the biggest challenges for organizations and employees alike has been the sudden transition to remote work. But we have learned that remote work works when the right technology and leadership come together. Check out some impactful stories that demonstrate how governments have gone above and beyond using the cloud to quickly adapt to this new environment and shift away from the status quo.

The AWS Public Sector Summit Online is happening October 20, 2020—registration is now open and at no cost. Max Peterson, vice president of international sales of worldwide public sector at AWS, is hosting the opening keynote, featuring inspiring stories from leaders who are serving their missions with AWS. In the keynote, Max will also share insights into emerging trends in the public sector and discuss topics around digital transformation, business continuity, resilience, security, and privacy—as well as training and workforce development. Meet the inspiring leaders featured in the keynote and learn a bit about their stories.

Organizations face a host of threats to business continuity, from extreme weather events to cyber-attacks to human error. Many turn to Amazon Web Services (AWS) to house their workloads in an environment that can withstand disruptions of any type or scale. IT resilience hinges on developing strong architectural, technological, and operational management. Cloud environments require assembly, execution, and maintenance. Here are five best practices for organizations to build IT resilience.