How to move to the cloud

The Cabinet Office led by Francis Maude is very much blazing the way in moving from more traditional "on-premise" based ICT infrastructure to more agile Cloud-based models. This has gone as far as being a mandate that all central and local Government should look at moving anything that is digital and also appropriate within security confines to a Cloud-based model with a hosting provider where applicable.

We have already seen huge successes in this area with the consolidation and migration of all gov.uk content to a single common hosted platform making huge ongoing cost savings. Estyn (the Welsh Ofsted), Staffordshire County Council, DWP, The Home Office, The Cabinet Office, Government Digital Service, University of Westminster, BBC and The G-Cloud Programme are a few examples of public bodies that all have Cloud infrastructure with Memset.

This mandate has very much run alongside the launch, growth and continuing development of the G-Cloud programme and the CloudStore which is effectively a common framework for any public body to procure online services from pre-approved suppliers that are largely SME's and UK based.

“[Departments] looking at their IT strategy should look toward the cloud frameworks at the end of contracts, rather than doing big outsourcing,” said Denise McDonagh,  director of the government's G-Cloud programme

Frameworks, mandates and programmes are all fine but what many Government ICT departments need is a simple and concise guide in terms of what they need to think about and the steps involved in making that leap of moving existing applications, digital content and data to a cloud provider.

Both Memset and CACI have over 22 years of combined experience in designing, migrating, implementing and supporting digital applications and services. We both have ISO9001 and ISO27001 accreditation which proves process, continuity and attention to security detail. There are a number of advantages of using Infrastructure-As-A-Service (IaaS), the main ones being significant cost savings, scalability, flexibility and the ability to use the latest platforms in terms of operating system and security patches without disruptive upgrades.

What do I want to move?

Sounds like an obvious question but this can be more complex than you think. Can I just move my underlying operating system license to a Cloud provider without changing the way I report it or pay for it? In the case of Microsof,t you may need to talk to your current Microsoft supplier about this. Am I running any specialist Database Software like Oracle? Again you may need to look at any licensing implications with such software. Most importantly you need to look at what hardware you have the solution running on and how utilised this is? If the solution is not virtualised then you may wish to look at doing this when you migrate as it can lower costs and also the Carbon footprint longer term.

Initial Engagement with Memset

Once you have a general idea of what you may need in terms of resources to effectively cope with the requirement then you should contact Memset and give us as much information as you can which will help us to provide a consultative suggestion on different options and costs for the infrastructure. We would then seek to provide a proof of concept where required to make sure that the service will work perfectly once setup.

How will it be moved

CACI in partnership with Memset can work with you to provide a smooth transition in terms of copying over all data and content from the existing platform to a Cloud-based infrastructure. This would then be subject to rigorous testing and any final configuration changes and also baseline security systems if and where required. The hosted infrastructure can be provided either at a PAN Govt IL2 or IL3 accreditation if required. Once the testing is complete we would look at syncing up any final changes and then setting the system live on the new platform with us.

Service Optimisation

Once the service is up and running we will work closely with you during the initial phase to make sure that functions such as backup, disaster recovery or failover are automated. We would also look at making any changes at an application level to better fit within the model of a Cloud platform rather than "on premise". We would also where applicable provide dashboard management features to the application. 

What UK SME's like Memset are trying to do is to educate and simplify ICT to convince people that it is no longer a black art that costs huge amounts of money. It is straightforward, simple, agile, flexible and with CloudStore procurement can be transacted with minimal fuss, cost or complication.