So we spent a lot of time in the state and local community talking about cloud computing. For the past few years, it's been near the top of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers priority list, and according to the Association's most recent survey, 51% of states have applications in private cloud while 25% have apps in a public cloud. But as we've learned from the state government cloud transformation journey, not all workloads in a data center today belong in one or the other. Instead, state governments need to contend with some workloads and operations being a better fit for an on-premise private cloud, while others might just work fine in a public cloud.
So maybe instead of an either-or question, we should be talking about the AND approach. Maybe instead of finding that silver bullet for cloud for state and local government, the approach is to find a way to make the platforms that are built to handle specific functions for state governments work together and work seamlessly. Coming to you live from Washington, D.C., this is called context, states with radio's new series, Home Chicks. This is context where we dive into all the beliefs that you need to know about particular issues and events happening in the state and local government information technology community.
On the most recent episode of context, we talked with Nutanix about their hyperconverged infrastructure platform and how it was helping state and local governments improve their operations. Today, we're back with Nutanix again to talk about building a basis for enterprise cloud off of hyperconverged infrastructure and finding that right balance between public and private. Our guest today is Nutanix's national sled sales director John Pelletier-John thanks so much for joining us again today on context. In today's episode of context, we've sponsored by Nutanix.
Let's start the show. John, we're happy to have you back on context today. In the intro, I gave some context about our last discussion on hyperconverged infrastructure and really attempted to segue into a talk about the balance between public and private cloud. How should state and local governments make the call about what workloads are best for what type of cloud and why is this AND approach better than an OR approach in this case?
Jake, it depends on the combination of the state agencies, goals, mission, and resources. Many state and local agencies are working with significant budget limitations and concerns over maintaining security and privacy of sensitive or even classified data. Between some workloads are a long way off. They've ever from being able to go out to the public cloud.
Take costs for example. Workloads that are fairly static and always on. Think email, collaboration suites like SharePoint, etc. Are the best candidates to maintain in a private cloud or an on-prem data center.
For curing, maintaining, managing resources for the most basic day-to-day workloads, they're always running as fairly predictable and cost-effective for agents to cost for a private cloud or an on-prem data center start to escalate. When agencies try to find out how to purchase and maintain enough infrastructure for the highest intensity moments in their worksite, even though those are the only acute moments in time. This is what public clouds really save the day by enabling an agency to access highly scalable resources for a finite period of time and then turn them off when the intense period is over. Think of it like this.
Most people don't choose to live in hotels as their primary residence. Hotels serve as important requirements. Space to live for a finite period of time. But they're expensive as a primary residence because they provide a lot of services that are much cheaper to provide yourself.
And so it is with public cloud. It provides a terrific service that is highly cost effective for a huge or finite period of time. So, so, kind of given that, what challenges does a public private blend of enterprise cloud present to state and local governments, attempt to consolidate and streamline their information technology infrastructure? And along with those challenges, what opportunities can it bring?
The greatest opportunity is within a hybrid cloud approach for anyone looking at the cloud to reduce costs, increase resiliency, and simplify architecture. The key is to be able to rationalize the right workloads to run in the public cloud. As I mentioned, the static, predictable workloads for email, public safety websites, and collaboration are best maintained in the government's own data centers. The workloads that are unpredictable or that are predictably intense for very short periods of time are the ones that are best to leverage the public cloud.
This way, the infrastructure that the government maintains is minimal. If you're procured, maintained, support, retire. And high-red is the way to do this and be able to do more with less. And which agencies or use cases across government IT with this approach work best, and can you provide some examples?
The public cloud is excellent as a resource to support intense, but finite, spikes of activity. Think of the IT resources that are needed for first responders, or as we recently experienced in election or tax collection. These are acute situations that require a lot of resources to support, but you don't want to maintain enough infrastructure for your most intense and spikes of work. So, the public cloud is a perfect place for those finite requirements.
By contrast, the private cloud is best suited for the static workloads that are always winning, with no real spikes in demand or activity. So, for example, email, public-facing websites in those types of workloads. Now occasionally, a public-facing website might have some periods of intense demand, and those periods are opportunities for public cloud to shine. But for the other, let's say 360 days of the year, private cloud is going to be the best.
Alright, John, last question here. How does an enterprise, public and private cloud approach, really set up a government IT operation that's nimble and flexible to more growth in the future? The key is to keep in mind that you never reach the optimal state by making either-or approach. By leveraging public cloud for what its strengths are, and the private cloud for what its strengths are, the government agencies can get the most bang for the buck.
Cost savings is entirely possible within the public cloud, and there's also a strong rationale for the lower-private cloud. The key is to optimize for each workload and leverage both formats to your advantage as an agency. Moving to the cloud is not the goal, but making the cloud serve your users' needs, the continuity of operations, disaster recovery, cost savings, and doing more with less, while still having what you need, when and where you need it. Those are the goals we're working to help us to help the state local governments and agencies today.
John, that's a fascinating take, really, on finding that right balance between public and private cloud infrastructure across government. It's going to be fascinating to hear more about how this issue grows and develops and changes, especially as we see that adoption number that we referred to, kind of the beginning of the conversation as we see that continue to increase. John, thanks for offering some context on this today. I appreciate having you on the show.
Thanks again, Jake.