Local Government: Meeting New ICT Challenges

Businesscomputingworld.co.uk, 2010/09/20

In Brief:

It is, perhaps, no understatement to say that IT departments within local government today face a raft of challenges like never before. As the public sector now braces itself for swingeing budget cuts, when the comprehensive spending review is announced by the Government on 20th October there are some uncertain times ahead and tough decisions to be made.

Against this backdrop, CIOs within local government must also continue to ensure that they can deliver effective and efficient IT services to the many individuals and departments that they serve, all at a reduced cost (...).

Delivering More with Less

(...)The introduction of new work methods and more flexible work patterns in local government now means that a more fluid IT structure is required (...).

Here we consider how application and desktop virtualisation technologies can be used to meet these challenges whilst containing costs and why these technologies are now poised for take-off in the public sector.

The twin demands of flexibility and efficiency

(...) A number of local authorities have followed the approach of private sector business and moved towards a ‘hot desking’ environment, which in order to free up office space, means that one PC is used by many users, across many sessions, to create greater flexibility. (...)

One solution for enabling greater flexibility lies in the introduction of Application Virtualisation (Server Based Computing) or Desktop Virtualisation technologies (VDI) (...).

Application and Desktop Virtualisation: Driving Down Costs and Improving Services

(...) With desktop virtualisation, operations such as maintenance and security, back-ups of data and updating applications are centralised and this can help organisations to make significant savings on their operational and management costs.

In fact, Gartner estimates in an independent study that organisations will be able to save between 40% and 70% on overall operating costs per user, per month by implementing an application or desktop virtualisation solution (...).

The bottom line

Finding new and innovative ways of delivering effective and efficient IT services whilst reducing costs looks set to dominate the agenda for CIO’s in local authorities. With application and desktop virtualisation, organisations can drive direct efficiency gains and cost savings on many levels (...).

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