Since its debut in the early 2000s, cloud technology has gradually accumulated a huge amount of traction within the modern tech climate, becoming the backbone for services, platforms, entire companies – and now, Israel’s Transportation Ministry, which will be migrating their IT and data management to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud following a government tender.
The move, which will be carried out by the global system integrator AllCloud, is expected to improve the transportation experience for citizens across Israel. Yaron Altshuler, head of public sector activity in AWS Israel, elaborated: “The project will help to produce deeper insights about users of public transport all over the country, using advanced data analysis tools and artificial intelligence, thus reducing response times for obtaining information and the ability to deal with any volume of data."
The move is expected to enable greater efficiency in the collection, management, research and processing of public transport data in Israel. Through combined use with data analytics tools, the Transportation Ministry will be equipped to more efficiently plan and improve public transportation in the country.
“The project … will help to produce deeper insights about users of public transport all over the country, using advanced data analysis tools and artificial intelligence, thus reducing response times for obtaining information and the ability to deal with any volume of data.”
Yaron Altshuler
The “Nimbus” public cloud
The ministry’s transition to public cloud services is part of the “Nimbus” public cloud project led by a team within the Finance Ministry together with the Government ICT Authority. The goal of the project is to migrate public organizations’ computing systems to cloud infrastructure, thus modernizing their services.That initiative has gained decent momentum so far, Altshuler said. “More and more government ministries and government companies are choosing AWS cloud in order to enjoy the benefits of an advanced, flexible and secure cloud infrastructure, which enables them to improve the services to citizens and offer innovative solutions."
The possible ramifications of the ministry’s move, as presented by AllCloud, are broad and hopeful, including smarter traffic direction to reduce traffic jams as well as streamlining and improving the communication between the Transportation Ministry and travel apps such as Moovit and Google Maps. This would improve the end-to-end quality of public transportation, lowering the number of vehicles on the road and reducing air pollution.
“For both citizens and the Transportation Ministry, the move to the AWS cloud is an important and strategic leap from a technological and operational standpoint,” said Ilan Nimni, SVP Cloud Platforms, EMEA at AllCloud. “Moreover, we are proud to take part in the significant project of moving the ministry’s infrastructure to the public cloud, with our strategic partner, AWS, as part of the Nimbus project."