Building A Bigger, Better Cloud In Ohio

The cloud, she is getting bigger, particularly in the great State of Ohio.

For Ohio has selected IBM for a $267-million 10 year modernization of the State of Ohio Computing Center (SOCC) through the development of a private cloud computing environment and the use of other hardware, software and services from IBM.

The SOCC includes four floors and more than 350,000 square feet of space, and houses infrastructure for several state agencies that support more than 1,400 applications executing on over 2,700 servers.

By working with IBM, the State will be able to focus on meeting application demands that underpin the services it provides to the citizens of Ohio.

The program will also lay the groundwork for future opportunities including the State’s drive toward private, secure cloud computing.

Highlights of the work with IBM include:

• Remediating power and cooling capabilities in the State’s facility in Columbus
• Migrating agency related infrastructure and application workloads within the facility
• Implementing operating model improvements to deploy ITIL-based service management
• Ongoing services in a co-managed arrangement with State staff

“We are working with IBM to significantly reduce the complexity of our infrastructure, improve data center operations and increase service delivery for state agencies and the constituents they serve,” Stu Davis, State of Ohio’s Chief Information Officer said. “This is a foundational component of Ohio’s IT Optimization efforts that will result in savings and culminate in the consolidation of the state’s IT assets into a primary state data center. This provides agencies with services they require and ensures we are spending taxpayers’ dollars once.”

The State’s cloud computing environment will be designed to provide a secure, high-performance and dependable foundation for computing, while costing the State less than its current infrastructure.

The goal of the State’s IT consolidation is to substantially reduce IT infrastructure services spend, and reallocate those funds to applications and services that support the citizens and businesses of Ohio.

You can learn more about IBM Smarter Government solutions here.