The Australian Government is taking great strides to achieve its goal of becoming one of the top three digital governments by 2025.

In its roadmap, data management is classed as an imperative for the public sector to ensure it is fit for the post-pandemic digital age. Engaging with the right delivery models is more critical than ever to provide better, more secure services for governments and citizens alike.

NetApp is a global, cloud-led, data-centric software leader, and is excited to announce their partnership with Microsoft to deliver the availability of Azure NetApp Files in the Azure Government Cloud in Canberra (Au Central) that supports data sovereignty requirements and cloud migration strategies for Federal Government agencies.

The expansion of the high-performance file storage service offers government departments in Canberra the total cost of ownership, performance, management, and confidence demanded by critical applications across federal, state, and local agencies.

With data sitting at the heart of digital transformation, there is a strong and growing appetite in government for agencies to move their key applications to the cloud.

We are proud to support our Australian government agencies on their cloud migration journey and keep them on track to reach the ambitious dream of Australia becoming a leading digital economy.

Azure NetApp Files has been designed to meet the high-performance workload needs and most stringent security requirements for high-impact unclassified data in the cloud. It ensures the highest standards of cybersecurity, and it offers the highest levels of availability, certified by the Information Security Registered Assessors Program (IRAP).

More so, it is one of the fastest-growing services in the Microsoft Azure portfolio, and governments can take advantage of the 99.99 per cent uptime guarantee.

Key benefits for government agencies include:

• Simplified migration to the cloud
  Azure NetApp Files eliminates the most common barriers to cloud-first mandates by providing a customised solution for customers’ enterprise storage needs.
• Migrate and run
  Customers can easily migrate the most demanding applications requiring Linux and Windows file shares to the Azure public and government clouds without complex code changes.
• Three performance tiers
  Azure NetApp Files performance levels enable customers to scale quickly and easily according to their storage requirements, without sacrificing performance, reliability, or security. Customers experience on-premises performance, low latency, and scalability for all file-based workloads, including SAP, Oracle, high-performance computing, and virtual desktop services.
• No separate contracts required
  Azure NetApp Files is a Microsoft Azure first-party service delivered through customers’ existing Azure agreements. No additional licensing is required. Customers pay only for what they use.

As the government moves towards its digital transformation goals, we are thrilled to be able to support the accelerated innovation and be part of industry collaborations that will drive data management forward in the right direction.