Cloud First to Cloud Smart Strategy

Arizona’s Cloud First Policy

The initial purpose of this policy was to outline the state’s use of cloud technologies for all infrastructure, platform, and software purchases made by state agencies. The goal was to promote and encourage the use of cloud technologies wherever possible and shutdown the state’s aging data centers by migrating applications to the cloud or to the new Shared Hosted Data Center until agencies could complete the remaining app modernization. The state’s Cloud First policy referred to the practice of prioritizing cloud-based solutions in-lieu of on-premises solutions.

Focusing on Cloud Smart Strategy

The State of Arizona is now focusing on a Cloud Smart Strategy that will build upon our Cloud First Policy which drove cloud adoption across the agencies. Now that a large part of the state’s applications have been moved to the cloud, agencies should continue to drive cloud adoption through IT modernization assessments, IT Strategy Plans, educating and upskilling their workforces in the areas of multi-cloud services, and application modernization platforms.

The Cloud Smart Strategy will assist agencies in optimizing their ongoing utilization of cloud services and developing more agile and innovative approaches to how they migrate their remaining legacy applications and build out new platforms that leverage both hybrid and native cloud services. IT Modernization Strategies will drive cloud adoption across the state through their use of cloud technologies and help achieve additional savings, security, and the ability to deliver faster services and select the best cloud technologies for their workloads.

The purpose of this initial policy was to outline the State’s use of cloud technologies for all infrastructure, platform and software purchases made by State agencies. The goal was to promote and encourage the use of cloud technologies and shutdown the State’s aging Data Centers and migrate to the cloud or to the new State Hosted Data Center until the app modernization projects were completed.

For further information on general information on the Cloud, visit the internal ADOA Cloud Resource Website.