EU Public Sector Cloud Migration: Economic and Regulatory Factors

This case study examines the economic arguments for migrating corporate or governmental data centers and computing infrastructure to the cloud for the European Union's public sector. It addresses the hesitation in widespread cloud technology adoption in Europe compared to the US, despite the technical readiness of cloud platforms. The analysis focuses on the potential for cost reduction through hardware savings, reduced maintenance, increased productivity, and pay-as-you-go pricing models. It also considers strategies for European governments to transition to cloud servers, such as adopting high-level technology stacks like SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. Beyond economic factors, the study acknowledges technical considerations like data availability, privacy, and cybersecurity, as well as environmental factors like cloud standards and regulatory requirements, which all influence the successful implementation of cloud computing within the European government's IT department. The study references scholarly articles using the Harvard Referencing System.

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With the emerging technology, it becomes very much necessary to adopt technology that will
help the European Union in providing better relation to their IT system. The state administration and
the local government of the EU countries need to implement a technology that will provide better
reliability and also within the budget. Cloud computing model helps in improving the data storing
capability. Before migrating to the cloud server, the organization needs to choose an appropriate
model that will help with managing the IT sector of the country (Gai, Qiu and Zhao 2016). This report
will discuss about how the cloud computing helps in reducing the cost. Over years it is being noted
that the several organization has moved to the cloud server and also it is being expected that with the
upcoming years it will gain more importance in the market. Thus it will be beneficial for the European
government and will also be cope up with the developing market (Gutierrez, Boukrami and Lumsden
2015). For the companies with the IT sector and equipment, it is best advice to switch to the cloud
server as these benefits the organizations from both the perspective that is provides the best facilities
in terms of technologies and also help in saving the cost. Several ways the cloud helps in saving the
cost are:
Hardware: the main advantage of the cloud computing is that the cost with the hardware gets
reduced. For the new expanding companies hardware can turn to be expensive, thus moving to cloud
system will help in managing the cost. In addition to these the internal cost incorporated with these
gets also saved.
Maintenance: the time required to maintain the database and the information saved with the cloud
server is less and also needs less human effort. Thus this is beneficial for the organization as the need
of human power will decrease thus there will less need of in house IT staff and will eventually save
the money.
Productivity: in spite of all these factors, migrating to the cloud server helps in effective production.
Thus the productivity and the efficiency of the workers increases. These helps the organization to gain
huge success.

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Capital investment: cloud computing is based on the pay as you go pricing model. That means the
organization needs to pay only for the resources they are accessing. Hus these format provides
flexibility to the organization and also saves the cost. The organization needs to pay only for the
resources they are using. Moreover, the up-front cost of the cloud is lower than the in- house
solutions.
According to the author Hashem et al. (2015), stated that more than 40 percent of the
companies are moving to cloud because of the services provided by them and the conferencing tools.
Cloud provides simplicity and flexibility, thus this features are attracting the organization to shift to
these architecture. The strategies that will help the European government to easily move to the cloud
server is moving to the cloud server as the high up technology stack as possible: cloud providers
offers several different solutions and architecture to adopt the cloud computing into their organization.
There are several architecture and the organization needs to choose among these (Avram 2014). These
are, IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. The government can choose any architecture based on the strategies
provided by them and can move to the cloud. SaaS provides huge range of software for the one
migrated to the cloud server. PaaS provides platform, where people can develop new application and
modify the existing one (Almorsy, Grundy and Müller 2016). IaaS provides infrastructures as service.
The government can choose any one architecture based on the demand of the IT staffs and can
increase their productivity.
The factors other than the economic factors that will affect the European government in the
case of implementing cloud computing in their IT department are the technical factors and the
environmental factors. The technical factors determines the availability of the data in the cloud
system. The privacy that are maintained with the data stored in the cloud. The data needs to be
controlled with the system so that there is no loss of data occurs within the cloud server. As the cloud
server uses internet thus several organization hosts their data together. The system needs to be
protected from the cyber-attacks, as cyber-attacks may lead to data breaching and will cost a huge
impact on the European government. Thus this becomes very necessary to build the strategies that
will help in protecting the system from such attacks. The system performance will get increased with

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the implementation of these technology. These technical factors will help in improving the working of
the cloud within the European government. From the survey made it is being noted that 90% of the
respondents said that data availability is a biggest concern and one of the most important fact (Botta
et al.2016). The IT infrastructure is also a fact that will impact the working of the cloud sever for the
European government. In addition to this the environmental factors are also needed to be focused, so
that they can improve better way of adopting the cloud system in the IT department. There are all total
9 factors of the environmental factors that are needed to be encountered while developing the cloud
system within the government. From the survey it is being noted that 65% people stated that the lack
of approved cloud standards is an important factor and is also one of the biggest concern. More than
61% population beloved that there is no need of national cloud computing policy (Rittinghouse and
Ransome 2016). Apart from all these the regulatory requirements is a factor of concern and needs to
be taken care by the one adopting the cloud service. Also the electricity availability and the broadband
connection is concern for more than 6% people and lastly he concern was with the sustainability. Thus
from this it can be concluded that not only the economic and regulatory factors but also the non-
economic factors and the environmental factors are necessary to be determined before transferring to
cloud sever. Thus the European government needs to understand all the factors before migrating to the
cloud server.

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References
Accenture, (2013) A new era for European public services, Cloud computing changes the game,
https://www.accenture.com/t20150527T211057__w__/fr-fr/_acnmedia/Accenture/Conversion-
Assets/DotCom/Documents/Local/fr-fr/PDF_4/Accenture-New-Era-European-Public-Services-Cloud-
Computing-Changes-Game.pdf
Almorsy, M., Grundy, J. and Müller, I., 2016. An analysis of the cloud computing security
problem. arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.01107.
Avram, M.G., 2014. Advantages and challenges of adopting cloud computing from an enterprise
perspective. Procedia Technology, 12, pp.529-534.
Botta, A., De Donato, W., Persico, V. and Pescapé, A., 2016. Integration of cloud computing and
internet of things: a survey. Future Generation Computer Systems, 56, pp.684-700.
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Gai, K., Qiu, M. and Zhao, H., 2016. Cost-aware multimedia data allocation for heterogeneous
memory using genetic algorithm in cloud computing. IEEE transactions on cloud computing.
Gutierrez, A., Boukrami, E. and Lumsden, R., 2015. Technological, organisational and environmental
factors influencing managers’ decision to adopt cloud computing in the UK. Journal of Enterprise
Information Management, 28(6), pp.788-807.
Hashem, I.A.T., Yaqoob, I., Anuar, N.B., Mokhtar, S., Gani, A. and Khan, S.U., 2015. The rise of
“big data” on cloud computing: Review and open research issues. Information Systems, 47, pp.98-
115.

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Rittinghouse, J.W. and Ransome, J.F., 2016. Cloud computing: implementation, management, and
security. CRC press.
several European countries,
https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/j/picbe.2017.11.issue-1/picbe-2017-0078/picbe-2017-
0078.pdf