The South Carolina Cloud Services offers a curated catalog of innovative IT technologies and services. These offerings range from free open-source solutions to sophisticated commercial applications. The availability of such services allows agencies the opportunity to test new technological capabilities. 
 
South Carolina Cloud Services will initially provide the following five core services: 

• Cloud account/subscriptions.
• Virtual servers.
• Relational databases.
• Enterprise storage.
• External firewall rules.

For additional information, please visit the IT Shared Services Catalog, or contact your ARM representative or the Program Management Office (pmo@admin.sc.gov).

The South Carolina Cloud Services will use a secure, reliable and cost-effective platform to provide a variety of benefits for participating agencies and the state as a whole. Such benefits are expected to include, but are not limited, to the following:

• Cost savings.
• Scalability and elasticity.
• Increased speed and agility.
• Flexibility and collaboration.
• Resiliency/disaster recovery.
• Reduced operational complexity.
• Security and privacy.

For additional information, please visit the IT Shared Services Catalog or contact your ARM representative or the Program Management Office (pmo@admin.sc.gov).

The South Carolina Cloud Services offers a curated catalog of innovative IT technologies and services. These services will continue to grow as Admin continues to identify, evaluate and distribute new capabilities. Currently, the following components are offered as part of the Cloud Services offering.

• Cloud account/subscription.
• Enterprise storage.
• External firewall rule.
• Relational database.
• Virtual desktop.
• Virtual server.
• Web hosting.

For additional information, please visit the IT Shared Services Catalog or contact your ARM representative or the Program Management Office (pmo@admin.sc.gov).

Q: Why is the cloud relevant to my agency?  
The deployment of South Carolina Cloud Services addresses an initiative set forth in the 2018 Statewide Strategic Information Technology Plan and is designed to improve the overall reliability of state systems. This offering allows the state to:

• Become more agile and responsive to constituent requests.
  • Quickly provision resources.
  • Utilize a wide library of cloud-based solutions.
  • Reduce operational complexity for monitoring and deploying assets.
  • Reduce the burden on IT and security personnel.
  • Adopt backup/disaster recovery solutions.
  • Support comprehensive usage reports for relevant metrics.
  • Match security standards and government requirements.
  • Orchestrate common requests with real-time routing and dashboards to track progress.
• Shift IT resources to tasks that more directly support an agency’s mission.
• Adapt to scalability requirements more seamlessly.
• Enable greater cost transparency.

 
Q: How does my agency participate in the South Carolina Cloud Services offering?  

• Step 1: Outreach
  To determine if your agency is a good candidate for the cloud, agency IT leadership should contact their Agency Relationship Management (ARM) representative or Admin’s Program Management Office (pmo@admin.sc.gov) to schedule a working session to cover such areas as provider and platform overviews, models, requirements, use cases, a cloud decision matrix and potential next steps.
   
• Step 2: Discover
  Once the agency has documented its interest in the South Carolina Cloud Services offering, the ARM representative will work to identify agency-specific requirements and use cases, identify which cloud services will be leveraged, review the pricing and invoicing process, and perform related tasks on the Agency Onboarding Checklist. A Statement of Work (SOW) will then be composed and executed to initiate a project to create appropriate cloud accounts/subscriptions for that agency.
   
• Step 3: Configure 
  Agencies will coordinate with the Admin team to begin the technical onboarding process. This will include, but is not limited to identity, networking, logging/monitoring, security, financial and service integration.
   
• Step 4: Operate 
  Agencies begin their journey with Cloud Services, coordinating with Admin as needed for operations and maintenance activities. Support mediums include training curriculum, job aids, Service Desk and cloud architecture consulting service.

Q: Who will manage my agency’s services? 
Agency IT leadership and their ARM representative will discuss which management model best fits specific agency needs. Agencies can be classified into one of two categories:

• Shared Services Agencies – Utilize shared infrastructure with minimal overhead.
• Self-Managed Agencies – Independently maintain and operate separate cloud accounts and associated infrastructure.

Q: How does billing work for Cloud Services?   
Admin uses a chargeback model which is intended to fairly and predictably allocate costs of the South Carolina Cloud Services across agencies based on usage. An agency is charged based on specific cloud costs incurred within their accounts or subscriptions, augmented by a shared services fee covering platform tooling and labor costs. Invoices are provided monthly to each agency. 

For specific billing questions or concerns, please contact your ARM representative or the Program Management Office (pmo@admin.sc.gov).

Below, please find a collection of resources pertaining to the South Carolina Cloud Services.

• Cloud Services Welcome Packet
• Cloud Services Program Overview Video

For additional information, please visit the IT Shared Services Catalog or contact your ARM representative or the Program Management Office (pmo@admin.sc.gov).