IT professionals in the public sector are expected to deliver the same type of innovative new services as the private sector, but with increasingly tighter budgets. Artificial intelligence, data analytics, smart cities, video surveillance, digital libraries—advanced technology is being embraced at all levels of government, generating massive amounts of data and overwhelming aging storage infrastructure and IT budgets.

With its economies of scale, the cloud should also lower total cost of ownership for data storage. Unfortunately, many in the public sector are not realizing significant savings as they migrate to first-generation cloud storage solutions like AWS S3, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform. Those that are saving money typically do so by opting for slower, lower-cost tiers of storage, sacrificing performance and immediate access to their data.

The U.S. Federal Government’s new Cloud Smart strategy tasks federal agencies with focusing first and foremost on the goals of their mission as they determine the most appropriate cloud + on-premises solutions for cost-effectively enabling them. This strategy, which considers the reality that not all existing implementations can or should be replaced with cloud-native solutions, has taken hold in the commercial sector as well. Cloud storage, whether used as backup, for archiving, or for active data, is seen as an ideal entry point for migrating to the cloud.

A recent Enterprise Storage Forum Survey identified aging storage gear as the number one storage challenge facing today’s IT organizations—and organizations are turning more and more to the cloud to eliminate equipment cost and complexity. About one-third of survey respondents already use cloud storage as their primary storage technology. Half are seriously considering purchasing cloud storage in the next two years.

Government is challenged not only with the storage of large unstructured data collections such as video, audio, scanned documents and other data. Retention periods for storing all this data are also particularly long compared with the private sector. At the same time, information may need to be accessed at a moment’s notice or be available to comply with scheduled or impromptu audits.

Secure cloud-based object storage from Wasabi is ideally suited for the public sector. It can help to drastically reduce the cost of storage, increase scale, and is perfect for consolidating intra-agency and inter-agency data. With Wasabi’s hot cloud storage, there are no storage tiers, so no need to consider what to archive and what data you may need to access quickly. Why pay for slow, cold storage solutions like Amazon Glacier, when you can store everything in Wasabi for less money, and access your data in seconds, not hours?

Public Safety Agencies Rely on Wasabi for Cost-effective and Compliant Retention of Digital Evidence

Digital forensics, facial recognition, and bodycam video footage are just a few types of data that public safety organizations collect and store to help solve crimes. These files are large and body camera programs, for example, can generate thousands of hours of video every day. All that footage must be safely preserved for trial and securely archived for years (or permanently for homicide cases). These large backups can be expensive and slow to restore, even using some cloud services.

With Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage, all your stored data is immediately available at performance speeds faster than the competition—and at a price that’s 80% cheaper! There are no additional charges to access your data (egress) or for any API calls. You can store more for less and access it fast whenever you need it.

State colleges, universities, and K-12 school systems are adopting digital technology to improve learning, enhance student experiences, and streamline operations. Interactive courseware and digital classrooms are transforming education and improving student performance. Intelligent administrative systems are increasing automation, cutting costs and improving decision-making. And cloud computing and the internet are helping academic researchers across the world collaborate and accelerate the pace of innovation.

While digital technology has the potential to fundamentally reshape education, many institutions are struggling to keep pace with skyrocketing data growth. Traditional on-site data storage platforms are notoriously expensive to deploy, scale and manage. They require significant upfront capital investments, pricey maintenance contracts, and specially trained IT staff.

First-generation cloud storage services like AWS S3 eliminate equipment expense and complexity but are still too costly and complicated for many applications.

Wasabi’s Defense-in-Depth Security Protects Against a Wide Range of Threats

Cybersecurity experts like the National Security Agency recommend a layered “defense-in-depth” approach to security to contain attacks and defend against the widest range of cyber threats. To that end, the entire Wasabi operating environment is built and managed with security best practices and standards in mind. We ensure the physical security of our data centers; employ strong authentication, authorization and accounting controls for all our cloud compute, storage and networking infrastructure; encrypt data at rest and data in transit to prevent unauthorized disclosure; and support an optional data immutability capability to protect data against ransomware and other forms of malware.