The State of Wyoming is dropping data centers in favor of the cloud

The State of Wyoming is closing its data centers and moving all of its data to the cloud, according to a report, in one of the biggest shifts by a state to offload its computing resources. According to the report, from InfoWorld, Wyoming has begun shifting all of its data to the cloud, to things like Google Apps, as well as commercial colocation centers, in what will mean the discontinuation of most of the state’s data center operations.

The state of Wyoming is planning to discontinue most of its data center operations and move its physical equipment to commercial colocation facilities. It will continue to manage its own physical servers at these colocation centers, but this outsourcing step is part of a broader plan to move the state’s computing resources to cloud services. State governments have been outsourcing various parts of their infrastructures for years, but how they outsource is changing. What’s now driving government IT decision-making in Wyoming and other states is a desire to move resources to dynamic cloud-based services, both public and private. Why pay attention to Wyoming? It’s a small state, in terms of population, with less than 600,000 residents, and it’s more known for farming than for tech. But sometimes big things happen in little places.