SA government agencies to adopt cloud services

The South Australian government will roll out cloud services enabling agencies to spin up and shut down technology infrastructure in minutes instead of months, following an agreement with iiNet.

Under the deal, iiNet’s South Australian brand, Internode, will provide the SA gCloud service to the government’s departments of Premier and Cabinet; Planning, Transport and Infrastructure, and Communities and Social Inclusion. iiNet said it expected to sign agreements with more agencies over time.

The new agreement delivers on the SA government’s Cloud Services Policy – announced in April – which mandates the use of infrastructure-as-a-service offerings using consumption-based pricing. This eliminates the need for agencies to acquire, own and operate servers, licences, software, and data centres.

“With the rapidly maturing cloud market, we are now at the point where government agencies can benefit from quicker deployment speeds, greater flexibility and improved value for money by using this model throughout iiNet,” said SA public sector minister, Susan Close.

“SA gCloud will meet stringent security requirements through a dedicated hardware platform, hosted in Adelaide, and contained within the state’s central data network. This avoids the need for data to travel across the Internet and benefits from data security controls already in place.”

Close said the SA gCloud service offered considerable savings over traditional technology procurement and management processes.

“Provision has been made for other agencies to join this arrangement at a later time,” Close said.

The SA government selected Internode as its preferred supplier after seeking tenders from the existing whole-of-government Hosting Services Panel.

Follow CIO Australia on Twitter and Like us on Facebook… Twitter: @CIO_Australia, Facebook: CIO Australia, or take part in the CIO conversation on LinkedIn: CIO Australia

Follow Byron Connolly on Twitter:@ByronConnolly