Helping Arapahoe County operate more efficiently with Google Cloud

Arapahoe, Colorado's first county, has been focused on cultivating growth opportunities for its residents for more than 150 years¹. Home to roughly 655,000 people from diverse backgrounds, Arapahoe County is projected to be one of the largest counties in Colorado within ten years². The County supports a variety of industries, including ranching, technology, and aviation with Centennial Airport – one of the 10 busiest general aviation airports in the nation. To serve its growing population and economy at scale, Arapahoe County needed a better way to manage its rising data center maintenance costs while balancing flat year-over-year budgets.

The County recognizes that maintaining its data centers will increase operational expenditures for the next five years, a problem that would undermine its mission. To help operate more efficiently, Arapahoe County partnered with Google Cloud – announcing a five-year agreement to migrate two costly data centers to Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE). This transition is estimated to help Arapahoe County save millions of dollars and help solidify the county's financial viability for years to come

Modernizing infrastructure for more cost-effective & efficient services

Arapahoe County’s migration to the cloud is part of its shift toward embracing digital technologies as a way to bring government services to residents in a more efficient and effective way. The County will work with Google Cloud and premier cloud partner SADA to support a successful migration to Google Cloud throughout its five-year journey. 

The County chose GCVE because it offered a risk-free way to move workloads into the cloud in a rapid and agile fashion, and a Google-provided subscription agreement guaranteed cost predictability. Moving to GCVE will also allow the County to leverage its existing IT talent for disaster recovery and production workloads.

A familiar platform lets IT teams focus on mission-critical work

Arapahoe County employees are learning Google Cloud platform and tools, which will help cut down on training and speed up the timeline for implementation. Working on Google Cloud platform will also help free up IT teams to work on other critical county initiatives. 

Google Cloud’s VMware Engine allows agencies to easily lift and shift their VMware-based applications to Google Cloud without changes to existing apps, tools, or processes. This means the migration will maintain the same level of security, compliance, and performance agencies expect from their existing VMware environment. It also unlocks access to Google Cloud’s global network, which offers advanced security features and machine learning capabilities, nurturing growth opportunities for Arapahoe County’s digital future.

Powering the future of Arapahoe County

Arapahoe County’s community-focused drive to cultivate sustainable and diverse growth opportunities will create a bright future for its residents. Google Public Sector is proud to partner with them and looks forward to powering new ways to reimagine serving both current and future residents.

To learn more about our solutions for state and local government, visit the Google Cloud for state and local government page.

_{1: https://www.arapahoegov.com/94/About
2: https://www.arapahoegov.com/2241/Arapahoe-County-Where-Good-Things-Grow}