Spatial Data Hosting Options

The problem

In 2015, Business and Information Services (BIS) embarked on the implementation of a “Spatial Information Strategy 2015-18” for the Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH). One of the key recommendations in this strategy was to move spatial data delivery services to a (cloud) hosted environment, on the expectation that this would save money and provide more flexibility — especially in meeting consistent service levels to varying loads.

Before establishing a cloud-hosted delivery environment for spatial data, BIS wanted to evaluate the pros and cons for different hosting options with regards to costs, ease of management, ability to meet expected functional needs, service levels, and resourcing and skill needs.

Mercury’s contribution

Mercury examined four hosting options for BIS: on-premises (On-Prem), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). We evaluated them on their ability to deliver key usage scenarios, and their fit with criteria including cost, technology and functionality, resourcing, performance, risk and disaster recovery and strategic alignment.