Government Customer Embraces Lawson's Cloud Move

Lawson Software, which focuses on enterprise resource planning, human capital management among other products and services, recently disclosed plans to offer its Enterprise Management Systems and Talent Management suite via Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. Now, a government customer has stepped up to embrace Lawson’s cloud strategy. Here are the details.

Lawson External Cloud Services, the software company claims, will make it easier for customers to buy, install and maintain enterprise software. Lawson cites Scott Co., Minn. among its first customers to opt for the Amazon EC2 offering. Lawson has been hosting the local government’s Lawson S3 Management Systems since 2007, also providing disaster recovery services. Lawson continues to provide hosting, but the DR duty now moves to EC2. A spokeswoman for Lawson said the switch has reduced recovery time from 24 to 48 hours to 8 hours.

Lawson does not anticipate disaster recovery to be the typical use case for the Amazon cloud service, according to the spokeswoman. Instead, DR will be “just one of many options,” she noted.

Other vendors, however, have developed DR-specific offerings. Double-Take Software, for example, in February revealed a disaster recovery arrangement with Amazon Web Services. Here again, EC2 is cast in the role as organizational backstop. Early customers include a construction company and a dental practice.

Overall, managed service providers may find disaster recovery in demand within certain niches. In addition to local government, healthcare organizations appear ripe for managed DR as medical records go electronic.

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