California Confirms Chief of Technology Services Office

Davood Ghods helps spearhead state consolidation and cloud computing efforts.

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California state senators unanimously approved veteran technologist Davood Ghods to lead the office in charge of most data center and network consolidation for the state.

Senators voted 35-0 to confirm Ghods as chief of the Office of Technology Services, which runs California’s primary data centers, as well as its statewide communications network. Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Ghods acting chief of the office last year.

“Davood is a capable and accomplished leader in the IT community,” said California CIO Carlos Ramos, in a prepared statement announcing the confirmation. “I am pleased the Senate voted to confirm his appointment and know California will benefit greatly from Davood’s wealth of expertise.”

Ghods, who leads a 700-person staff at Office of Technology Services, is one of the state officials spearheading the development and adoption of California’s new private cloud service called CalCloud. Operated in partnership with IBM, the service gives agencies and departments an avenue to procure servers and storage — infrastructure as a service — on demand within a state-run Tier 3 data center.

“Over time, the Department of Technology intends to continue its cloud solutions with offerings for platform as a service and software as a service,” Ghods wrote in a recent opinion piece published by TechWire, a Government Technology sister publication. “The information technology industry is rapidly changing, and this new offering is evidence that the Department of Technology is changing with it.”

Ghods spent 28 years in public- and private-sector technology positions, including more than 20 years in California state government.

 

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