For the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), the cloud isn’t just an organizational goal or a future ambition — it’s a mainstay for today.
CalPERS already is using 70 cloud solutions, and in the past six months CIO Liana Bailey-Crimmins says the organization has implemented Office365, ServiceNow, Apptio for IT portfolio management, and a software management tool called Flexera. An upcoming procurement also will replace CalPERS’ disaster recovery system with a cloud-based solution.
More than most state agencies and departments, CalPERS has moved into the cloud in full force.
“The one thing I learned growing up in the state is that we do projects and we get the funding really well, but to maintain our systems — the day-to-day refresh stuff — we never seem to get enough money to do that,” Bailey-Crimmins said. “And so by the time you’re done with the project, you have to do another [proposal] to replace it. So if we don’t own the commodities very well, wouldn’t a cloud provider be an excellent opportunity?”
Let the vendor take care of load balancing, server platforms and storage and treat them as a managed service, she added. Along the way, the state workforce must be made a part of the journey to the cloud and should know their role as an administrator probably will change. Provide the necessary training and roll out cloud solutions progressively, but not before they’re ready.
“I don’t think we should ever fear the future. I think once we fear it, then we should be looking for a new job because as CIOs we’re supposed to be looking out to where the technology is going, and then understanding our business enough so that we’re marrying the two,” Bailey-Crimmins said.
