A Walk in the Clouds- The Advantages of AWS GovCloud
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VRS Technology: Learn about hosting in the AWS GovCloud
Budget and security are two of the biggest concerns when it comes to hosting a voter registration system. The best way to satisfy both is by trusting a provider with vast knowledge and experience. It’s financially impractical for election departments to staff an IT team and maintain in-house servers that could match the resources and knowledge of a hosting service like AWS GovCloud.
Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) GovCloud, is an isolated, private cloud specifically designed for government agencies and organizations. Votem chose AWS GovCloud as its host environment due to its highly scalable, secure platform—two qualities imperative to election software.
AWS GovCloud’s scalability is beneficial to the elections industry, as it is highly suitable for periods of fluctuating traffic—for example, heavy-traffic leading up to an election, followed by sporadic periods of low-traffic.
The Value of the AWS GovCloud
In a mission-critical industry like elections, where security and performance are of utmost importance, but a county or state budget must also be considered, AWS GovCloud is one of the most cost-effective, secure hosting options available. Here are 5 advantages to hosting with them:
1. Security Compliance:
AWS GovCloud is compliant with regulatory requirements, such as Department of Defense (DoD) Cloud Computing Security, U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), and Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) requirements. With AWS GovCloud, security is always top priority.
2. Disaster Recovery and Backup:
One failed in-house server would be reason enough to consider AWS GovCloud. AWS GovCloud automatically backs up data in geographically diverse locations to ensure data is never lost.
3. Highly-Scalable Performance:
AWS GovCloud allows nearly infinite performance scalability—efficiently accommodating the election cycle need of focused high-performance followed by lower resource needs.
4. Guaranteed Uptime:
For any critical operation like elections, uptime is a key consideration for a hosting solution. AWS GovCloud offers a 99.95% service commitment.
5. No Hardware or Unpredictable Maintenance Costs:
The cost of physical servers aside, extraneous financial factors are eliminated with AWS GovCloud, such as the electricity costs to run in-house servers, IT resources, and software licenses.
Cloud storage has become one of the most modern, flexible IT platforms available and is already a regular part of most people’s lives- from banking to sharing music to online file collaboration. With highly reputable industry references, adherence to government regulations, and impressive security and scalability, AWS GovCloud is a great option for hosting modern election management and voter registration systems.
Who else uses AWS GovCloud?
Besides Votem, AWS GovCloud hosts a variety of voter registration, voter education, and voter engagement groups, including: Pew Charitable Trusts’ Voting Information Project, Rock the Vote, and OSET Foundation TrustTheVote™ Project.
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