Discover how the State of California Natural Resources Agency has reduced cost, decreased storage footprint and increased storage space with NetApp storage. http://nt-ap.com/1ncbONm

1. Executive Summary
State of California:
Government Cloud
Operating at the Speed of Citizens
With the world’s eighth-largest economy and a diverse population of more than
38 million people, California is more like a small country than a state. Management
of California’s precious resources—from its coastlines to its parks, fish, wildlife,
energy sources, and water—is a responsibility that impacts not only the people
of California, but people around the world.
Tasked with that responsibility are the 29 organizations within the California Natural
Resources Agency (CNRA), which depend on real-time data access to make informed
decisions and respond quickly to disasters such as flood, fire, drought, and earthquakes.
“The goal of our IT organization is to provide timely information and services to our
departments so that they can operate at the speed of the citizens,” explains Tim
Garza, IT director for California Natural Resources Agency.
In 2008, budget shortfalls brought the state to a critical inflection point. With
30% annual data growth and an ever-increasing demand for information, the
CNRA could no longer afford to support business as usual.
“We were in dire straits,” says Garza. “There was no funding to support information
technology efforts that would enable our business areas to function effectively, let
alone improve and innovate.”
As agencies throughout the state grappled with the financial crisis, ­California State
CIO Carlos Ramos proposed a visionary strategy to meet growing demand with
fewer resources through shared IT services. The diversity of needs across the
­organizations of CNRA made the agency the perfect organization to realize
Ramos’s vision. Together, Garza and his team led the California Natural Resources
Agency’s transformation, bringing the agency’s IT organizations together with an
internal private cloud solution built on industry technologies that utilized NetApp®
storage to provide shared services and information.
“Without a fundamental change in our service architecture, we would have been
out of the game,” says Garza. “NetApp provided the multi-­tenant, shared services
storage ­infrastructure and functions to ­support the increased data demands on
resources within our agency.” Continued
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Storage Footprint
30%
Decrease
State of California Sets New Standards
for Secure Cloud Services in Government
Across 29 Agencies
35%
Cost Reduction
Storage Space
300%
Increase
A New Standard for
Government IT
For Garza, deploying the state’s first
­private cloud infrastructure was the easy
part. Uniting 29 disparate departments
to entrust their data storage needs and
services to the CNRA organization and
pursue a new strategy would require
nothing short of a cultural revolution.
Prior to 2008, each department in the
CNRA was responsible for its own
IT infrastructure, resulting in “islands”
of data locked away on disparate and
siloed systems.
“We decided not to force other depart-
ments into joining the CNRA private
cloud,” says Garza. “We wanted to
build our infrastructure in such a way that
they would want to join, because it made
good business sense. Thanks to the joint
leadership of the agency departments’
CIOs, that has happened.”
To create an IT infrastructure that
other organizations would want to join,
Garza implemented what he calls the
“Three-C Approach”: Continued
“The goal of our IT organization
is to provide timely information
and services to our departments
so that they can operate at the
speed of the citizens.”
Tim Garza
IT Director
California Natural Resources Agency

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Today, the CNRA is a model for government cloud computing. Its highly flexible
IT infrastructure allows the agency to provision computer resources and storage
as departments and demands grow—or shrink. “With NetApp, we have the ability
to scale up and down as needed,” explains Tony Morshed, chief operations officer
at the Department of Water Resources (DWR), one of the largest departments in
the CNRA. “There are always business demands, external and internal, that require
us to quickly and effectively ­provision storage and services.”
Every department, regardless of its size, can now get exactly the resources it needs
when it needs them, eliminating the cost of overprovisioning. The ­savings have
been a windfall for cash-strapped departments. Despite the growth in demand
for services, capital and operational expenditures for overall agency information
technology have dropped 42% and 35%, respectively. Dollars and hours that
would have been spent managing standalone systems have been freed for more
strategic and business-aligned ­project efforts.
The massive cloud computing deployment at CNRA has also transformed decision-
making by breaking down information silos and enabling horizontal access to data
across departments. Holistic data access is empowering the departments of the CNRA
with new insights as they tackle challenges as large and diverse as the state itself.
With California facing its worst drought on record, the change could not have come
at a better time. At the Department of Water Resources, fast access to more than
100 years of data—on everything from water flows and soil erosion to ­climate
change and population growth—is critical to keeping the water flowing.
“With our old systems, it could take up to 30 days to load the data they needed,”
explains Morshed. With the new shared-services infrastructure built by the CNRA
team, the agency has tripled its data storage capacity, giving engineers, scientists,
hydrologists, and external stakeholders on-demand access to ­current and historical
data for projections and forecasting.
“In a crisis situation like this one,” adds Morshed, “our customers can’t wait 30 days
for data. They need that data today to know what to do tomorrow.”
• Capacity to provide compute resources
and support 30% annual data growth
that enables the business’s information
service needs
• Capability to access services and data
as effective business decision-making
tools
• Consumerization for all business users
to access the capacity and capability
when, where, and how they want
Through this innovative approach, CNRA
improved provisioning service levels up to
70%, setting a new standard for government
IT. In the past, it could take weeks—even
months—to provision new IT resources.
“We’ve shrunk our delivery time to about
two days now, and in some cases we can
deliver storage to our customers within
hours,” explains ­Robert Syphax, chief
of Storage ­Operations for CNRA.
The CNRA is also now in a better position to
address a variety of needs, such as virtual
desktop infrastructure, high-­performance
computing, big data analytics, and
mobile strategies, while simultaneously
improving reliability and scalability.
“We think of ourselves as a business
enabler, not a technology shop,” says
Garza. “Our business is not about the
servers or the things in the data center.
It’s about information. It’s about providing
access to data and the ability to do
whatever you need to do with it.”
For more information, read the CNRA
technical case study.
“Operating at the Speed of Citizens” (Continued) “A New Standard for Government IT” (Continued)
About the California Natural
Resources Agency
The California Natural Resources Agency
consists of 29 departments whose
­mission is to restore, protect, and
manage the state’s natural, historical,
and cultural resources for current
and future generations using creative
approaches and solutions based on
technology, science, and collaboration.
About NetApp
NetApp creates innovative storage
and data management solutions that
deliver outstanding cost efficiency and
accelerate business breakthroughs.
Discover our passion for helping
companies around the world go
further, faster at www.netapp.com.
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