NSW govt to pilot secure network for GovDC, public cloud – Strategy – Cloud

The NSW govt is scheduling to replace the GovDC managed providers backbone with a new safe community to increase knowledge centre connectivity in the wake of its new general public cloud-very first plan.

The govt adopted a “public cloud by default” solution for all new providers and the substitute of existing providers in Oct final year in a bid to speed up general public and non-public cloud adoption.

It expects that general public cloud will be utilized for a least 25 p.c of all IT providers by 2023, with non-public cloud providers by GovDC utilized for other providers deemed unsuitable for general public cloud.

In mild of this, the Department of Consumer Company (DCS) is wanting to replace GovDC’s managed service backbone with a next generation inter- and intra-knowledge centre “fabric”, which it calls the ‘government safe network’.

It has approached the market for a “secure, scalable and modern-day fabric to facilitate interconnectivity amongst NSW govt and cloud providers these kinds of as GovDC cloud and general public cloud”.

“This fabric will be specified the identifier of govt safe community, reflecting its function replacing the connectivity capabilities of the managed service backbone,” the ask for for proposal states.

DCS mentioned the community would “enable a very simple, lower price, speedy, accessible, and scalable relationship to workloads and services” to agencies, as very well as other general public bodies these kinds of as councils and universities.

A schematic diagram suggests the community will connect the state’s 9 clusters to GovDC, which includes non-public clouds, general public cloud and secured safety plan framework (PSPF) qualified knowledge centres.

Supply: NSW Department of Consumer Company

“The guiding principle of the alternative is ‘connect the moment, connect to many providers and agencies,” the division mentioned.

DCS options to pilot the community initially, “in recognition of the threat connected with endeavor a comprehensive deployment of govt safe network”, prior to a broader rollout across govt.

The pilot will involve connecting a “single authorised provider with a solitary NSW govt agency, targeted on acquiring GovDC cloud capacity in the Silverwater GovDC location only”.

GovDC’s market of electronic application, OneGov, jointly with an unnamed cloud service provider have been selected for the pilot.

“This very first stage of the venture will seek to demonstrate complex capacity and overall performance, develop operational maturity, and exhibit that the fees and positive aspects stack up,” DCS mentioned.

“It is proposed that the pilot be undertaken in partnership with a single agency and a single service service provider.”

Additional phases – which will be issue to assessment – will see the alternative prolonged to equally the Silverwater and Unanderra govt knowledge centres, as very well as NSW Wellbeing and a regional knowledge centre.

A fifth stage is aimed at enabling “connection by to [Azure] ExpressRoute [and AWS] Direct Connect”.

DCS expects the service service provider to style and design, construct and supply ongoing support for the pilot, which will involve physically rolling out the hardware to the Silverwater GovDC, as very well as configuration.

It wishes to use Ethernet VPN technologies for the fabric with a combination of digital extensible regional area community and multiprotocol label switching to support multi-web site connectivity.

Submissions to the RFP close April 26, with a a single year agreement anticipated by the close of June. An market briefing is planned for April 9.