City IT Can Sidestep Colocation Danger

InformationWeek: Cloud services and colocation give city governments new options to save costs and improve IT. But experts say cities should proceed with eyes open -- and with lawyers on call.

Spurred by virtualization, whereby hardware or software resources are electronically expanded to serve multiple users, services are cropping up worldwide that enable municipal IT departments to increase the size and strength of their compute and storage resources. These services take the form of cloud offerings, where resources and applications can be accessed directly by the customer, or as colocation services, where compute, storage and networking gear are available for use at an offsite location.

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