Salesforce, Government and Clouds

With Salesforce now using Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud infrastructure in Australia, Government departments are assured their data is no longer offshore. AWS also has parallel government cloud offerings which present an opportunity to see what else can be done to take advantage of cloud computing.

What are some typical systems you could potentially host in AWS?

• Web Content Management
• Record Management
• Grant Management
• Asset Management
• Procurement
• Finance

Some of these can be provisioned by extending Salesforce with third-party applications like Glider Systems for grant management. If a Salesforce application is not available, departments have the ability to create a range of cloud hosting environments in Azure or AWS:

• Private cloud: Infrastructure (servers, storage, networks etc.) for use by only your organization
• Community cloud: Infrastructure for use by a community with shared interests
• Public cloud: Infrastructure for open use by the general public
• Hybrid cloud: Two or more cloud infrastructures bound together by technologies that share the workload e.g. cloud bursting

By way of example, let's look at using the following technologies:

• Web Content Management: Sitecore
• Customer Relationship Management: Salesforce
• Record Management: Micro Focus Content Manager

On the public side, we can rapidly deploy Sitecore to the Azure Cloud (or to Amazon EC2). Website visitors who submit web forms have their field data and any submitted documents pushed to Salesforce via S4S. The form can be mapped to any Salesforce object but typically a case or lead record is created (the latter can include Sitecore analytics metadata that surfaces website behavior in the CRM). Any new documents uploaded from the form, and attached to Salesforce records, are detected by T4S and automatically pushed to mapped locations in TRIM (Micro Focus Content Manager). This process automates the capture of web form data in a robust and secure manner that can be configured to meet the requirements of the Privacy Act. 

With government cloud options now available in Australia, the round-trip delay time is almost eliminated so it is possible to host other applications in the cloud including TRIM itself.

FuseIT can partner with government departments to help design, develop and deploy Sitecore, Salesforce, and TRIM cloud-based systems. The objective is to create a secure, affordable, and scalable solution that simplifies and automates the capture, management, and access to information in the right business context.