EnterpriseDB Announces Rise in Government Adoption of Postgres Across Global Markets

Open source policy initiatives in the United States, Europe, and Asia are transforming government IT worldwide as agencies shift from costly traditional databases to EDB Postgres™

Date -2016-02-16 Location - Bedford, Mass.

“Government agencies need the freedom of choice and agility that open source technologies provide so they can shift cost savings to pursue mission-critical initiatives,” said Ed Boyajian, President and CEO of EDB. “EDB Postgres satisfies the cost and innovation challenges of policy initiatives. We also partner with governments at all levels worldwide to help them build more nimble and responsive infrastructures with open source.”

TWEET: @EDBPostgres works with #governments worldwide to tackle critical initiatives with #OpenSource #Postgres.

In the United States alone, EDB works with more than 150 Civilian, Defense, and Intelligence customers. Federal government agencies span the Department of Defense (DoD), including the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), as well as the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

EDB also has an established presence among government users in global markets. In Europe, customers include the UK’s National Health Service (NHS); and in the Netherlands, Child Protective Services and Dutch DigiD, which both utilize a cloud-based system built on EDB Postgres by EDB partner PinkRoccade Local Government. In Asia, EDB is working with numerous state and central governments. For example, in India, EDB currently collaborates on 40 different e-governance initiatives.

Open Source Initiatives Worldwide

Rising costs and a growing desire for independence from traditionally dominant vendors that wield too much control over customers are driving governing bodies to issue formal policies to adopt more open source software in government agencies and schools. Recent actions include:

  • In the United States, the Obama Administration, through The Open Government Partnership, called for federal agencies to develop open source software policies. Government CIOs also face greater scrutiny in technology spending under the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA).
  • The European Union, through a resolution of the European Parliament, called for European institutions to replace proprietary software with open source in order to reinforce technological independence.
  • The French government passed the Digital Republic Bill, which addresses a broad range of Internet and digital rights issues and features several high-profile initiatives for governments and schools to adopt open source software.
  • In India, the government issued a formal policy, the Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software for Government of India, which calls for central and local governments to consider open source software for new projects and for migrating existing projects.
  • In 2014, the UK Government joined the D5 Charter with partners Estonia, Israel, New Zealand and South Korea, which laid out a series of commitments to support digital transformation of government and public services. Speaking to CIO, Andrew Meyer, the program head of the UK’s Health and Social Information Centre, which is overseen by the UK’s National Health Service, stated, “Open source can support the enterprise, and NHS is a huge enterprise.”
  • Also in the United Kingdom, EnterpriseDB is an approved supplier on the UK Government GCloud Framework, which is being pushed more into the mainstream of public sector procurement. This inclusion endorses EDB Postgres adoption and allows public sector organizations to buy services without having to participate fully in the competitive procurement process.

Meeting Government Goals with EDB Postgres

Government customers have gravitated to EDB Postgres to satisfy open source policy requirements based on government-specific operational and technology requirements. These include:

  • Database Performance and Scalability – EDB Postgres enables greater resource utilization and higher performance on today’s more powerful servers. EDB has also optimized Postgres to support higher numbers of users to expand performance. Organizations with larger databases and numbers of users realize greater performance as they scale their systems onto newer hardware.
  • Budget Transparency – EDB Postgres is sold as a comprehensive subscription that includes (i) the database and management; (ii) integration and migration suites across multiple deployment options; and (iii) support and upgrades, with no additional per-feature, per-user costs. Governments seeking greater clarity in budgetary reporting, such as U.S. agencies under FITRA, have a simpler task counting subscriptions than trying to track complex licensing structures. 
  • Deployment Flexibility – EDB Postgres is open source, standards-based and runs on all major operating systems, including Windows, LINUX, and UNIX. EDB Postgres frees end-users from vendor lock-in, and allows them to choose deployments on bare metal; virtually; or in a public, private or hybrid cloud environment, with no restrictions on usage.
  • Database Security – With its SQL/Protect feature, EDB integrated into Postgres an additional layer of security to provide a consistent and standardized module inside the database that protects against SQL injection attacks. Enhanced Auditing features assist with government accreditations and security compliance.
  • DBA Security Controls – Password profiles define rules for password complexity, reuse, expiration and more, increasing EDB Postgres’ support for PCI DSS compliance. Additional complex password rules based on complexity, reuse, expiration, and account lock-out further enhance EDB’s support for PCI DSS compliance.
  • Support – 24x7 support with regular security bulletins and patch releases.
  • High Availability & Management and Integration Tools – Multi-master replication, backup and recovery, management, monitoring, alerting, and automated failover for mission critical environments.

Availability and Software Downloads

EDB Postgres Advanced Server 9.5 can be downloaded here. EDB Postgres Enterprise Manager 6.0 can be downloaded here.

To leverage the full value of EDB Postgres Advanced Server and EDB Postgres Enterprise Manager for enterprise deployments, these components are included as part of an EDB Postgres Enterprise subscription. This includes the EDB Postgres Advanced Server database, plus migration, integration and management tools for developers and DBAs, as well as 24x7 global support. EDB Postgres Enterprise Manager also is included with the EDB Postgres Standard subscription, thereby bringing its manageability and productivity benefits to PostgreSQL users. In addition, a broad range of training, professional services and certification solutions are available from EDB and EDB’s partners.

This week, February 17-19, EDB will attend AFCEA West at the San Diego Convention Center. AFCEA West is the foremost DoD event to enable industry leaders to learn more about military requirements and connect with senior military and government decisionmakers. 

To learn more about how EDB helps agencies transition to and operate open source platforms, or to schedule a meeting at AFCEA West, please contact us at Government@EnterpriseDB.com.

 

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