ICIPRO – CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE FOR PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS IMPLEMENTED BY YMENS RECOGNIZED BY EUROCLOUD AWARDS ROMANIA FOR BEST BUSINESS IMPACT OF CLOUD SERVICES
Continuing the presentation of Romanian winners of EuroCloud Award 2016, here is a review of one of the most important Cloud project recognised in the “Best Business Impact provided by Cloud Services” category, where the champion is company Ymens, for the project „ICIPRO – Cloud Infrastructure for Public Institutions”.
What about the project? The ICIPRO project – Cloud Infrastructure for Public Institutions in Romania” is the result of deep collaboration between ICI – the National Institute for Research and Development in Informaticsand Ymens, a Romanian company from Teamnet group. The project was born from a critical need for more efficient acquisition, implementation, and better operation and usage of IT infrastructure. In the same time, Romanian government should be aligned to the European strategy regarding Cloud adoption in eGovernment services.
What is very important here? ICIPRO is practically the very first major Cloud initiative for the public institutions in Romania. This is the first step in a more large adoption of Cloud Computing in Romanian public infrastructure. National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics (ICI) will be ready to extend ICIPRO bringing more services to this platform and offering more storage opportunities to Romanian government organizations. In this moment, only 20% of the data center capacity is currently used by ICIPRO.
The ICIPRO implementation is important also for his capabilities to create the required regulatory framework that will drive a fast adoption of Cloud models throughout the Romanian market.
ICIPRO is the first Cloud infrastructure project in Romania that addresses typical issues in public administration structures:
Data fragmentation and data duplication;
Improper usage of existing infrastructure capacity;
Complicated public procurement procedures and difficult flows.
The main benefits offered by ICIPRO implementation are:
Data center consolidation – ICIPRO offers IT availabilities for processing, storing and communication to all public entities that can either leverage this infrastructure to build new services or to migrate existing systems to a unified central platform;
Business Continuity services – available as backup or Disaster Recovery for existing systems in Public Administration;
One-stop-shop – for IaaS or PaaS services needs in the public entities for eGov services developing.
Costin Matache, CEO Ymens
“Innovation is our main goal. And for Ymens innovation has multiple dimensions. For the public administration clients, the innovation involves new technologies adoption stimulation. In this way, ICIPRO project transformed the National Institute for Research and Development in the first Cloud services provider for the public sector in Romania”, said Costin Matache, CEO Ymens, in an interview for EuroCloud Romania. “On the other hand, Ymens is a powerful promoter of BPaaS (Business Process as a Service) concept on the local market. On European level, this business model is already well defined as Smart Cloud BPaaS Broker”.
Which are the technologies adopted in the ICIPRO implementation? The main technology stack is based on a Microsoft core with Windows Server / Hyper -V 20 12 R2, Microsoft System Center, and Microsoft Windows Azure Pack. This was complemented by two components: NSBS Platform – NEC Cloud Brokerage Suite and ELO Digital Solutions – ELO Enterprise 9 as document management solution. In order to enhance the services delivered through this Cloud infrastructure, the project included also an interoperability platform based on Microsoft Biztalk Server 2013, and a user management platform based on Microsoft Forefront Identity Management Server.The software platform is supported by a high-end hardware infrastructure: 148 NEC servers based on Intel Xeon technology, HP storage systems 3 PAR 350 TB, CISCO Communication Infrastructure 10 Gbps, IBM Tap eLibrary, placed into a specially designed data centre location.
But ICIPRO project benefits will be multiplied by secondary and multi-reflection impacts of Cloud adoption, with direct involvement in:
Economic Growth: acquisition and usage of IT resources and services become more efficient, with major investment and operational costs;
Fast Social Integration: all public institutions, including social care institutions, gain access to high-performance IT infrastructure and services, being able to radically improve the quality of social services provided;
Environmental Sustainability: by infrastructure consolidation, any Cloud platform can reduce the CO2 footprint and improve the IT energy efficiency;
Governance: more performing IT infrastructure is a warranty for more efficient and better performing eGov services for citizens and business environment.
In the same time, ICIPRO platform offers a wide area of benefits for the Government employees:
Increased focus on building new and better services for citizen;
Fast access to high-quality infrastructure with reduced costs;
Improve internal workflows with ready-made solutions available on the Cloud and adapted to public sector user profile;
Funds reallocation for other priority investments;
Easier scaling for peak periods;
Improved SLAs for ITC infrastructure;
Business Continuity infrastructure availability.
Interesting is one of the ICIPRO main clients is ICI itself, due to platform facilitates allowed to scientific research activities. This will enable ICI to build an academic knowledge database associated with the implementation and operation of Cloud services.
Concluding, the ICIPRO project has the potential to enhance the technology usage in the Romanian public sector, thus covering IT needs and providing the necessary tools for a more transparent and efficient service delivery model for the citizens and the business environment. Cloud model brings a simplified interaction between citizens and the public administration, reducing the errors, providing rapid access to information, and impressive economies of time and budget.
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What about the project? The ICIPRO project – Cloud Infrastructure for Public Institutions in Romania” is the result of deep collaboration between ICI – the National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics and Ymens, a Romanian company from Teamnet group. The project was born from a critical need for more efficient acquisition, implementation, and better operation and usage of IT infrastructure. In the same time, Romanian government should be aligned to the European strategy regarding Cloud adoption in eGovernment services.
But ICIPRO project benefits will be multiplied by secondary and multi-reflection impacts of Cloud adoption, with direct involvement in:
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2 thoughts on “ICIPRO – CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE FOR PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS IMPLEMENTED BY YMENS RECOGNIZED BY EUROCLOUD AWARDS ROMANIA FOR BEST BUSINESS IMPACT OF CLOUD SERVICES”