Journey to the Cloud At Derby City Council Nick O Reilly Director of Digital Services
Contents Council Context Strategic Decision What cloud platform and why Implementation Challenges What Next Conclusion
Council Context Business Context 49 million cuts on top of 116m achieved Aging Population creating increased demand Integration of health and social care Delivering Differently Programme: Communities - Local people doing more for themselves/each other Services - Greater self manging and commercial service focus People - A modern, flexible (digitally enabled) workforce Information System Context End of 7 year outsource contract Investment in Microsoft based software Strategy to use of the shelf software 8 million budget cut by 2 million already No internal data centre or server rooms Need to switch focus to digital delivery Use of G-Cloud framework has reduced costs Use of G-Cloud has speeded up time to buy
Strategic Decision Cloud Computing a core strategic choice Council does not want to manage data centres/servers Two phase approach Infrastructure as a Service to achieve contract end 70% target for IaaS by end 2016/17 Software as a Service as software contracts end 50% target for SaaS by end 2019/20 Tried SaaS but most vendors adding a premium price
Target Operating Model - Overview
Target Operating Model - Detail
What Platform and why Microsoft Azure no appetite in the business to move to open source Legacy operating environment what we are used to Application Software in use hosted largely on Microsoft Gain more leverage from Enterprise Agreement Use SCSM and other tools for new Service Desk Portal Exploit Microsoft funding for cloud migration Exploit Office 365 most staff use office at home! Confidence in platform and in partners available Risk Appetite of moving to alternative - very low
Implementation Challenges 1 Design Design need a new approach and need to be robust Due Diligence what % of servers/systems are truly cloud ready (Design said 75% - Actual was 55%) How to exploit cloud components Cloud security meeting compliance How to optimise the proposed configuration Tip use a supplier who understands all of this Even with a good design many pitfalls to avoid
Implementation Challenges 2 Migration Allow more time than you first thought Software that has hard coded server addresses Software and Database performance Some migrated separately and worked well Some need to migrate together Some we left database behind and saw improved performance (which was unexpected) Highlighted previous poor configuration Understand latency issues
Implementation Challenges 3 Network Achieving and end to end network was not easy Express Route connection took months to resolve Delayed sever migration considerably Once migrated servers/systems performed well Hard to trace where (data centre, network hub, local) We knew something was limiting throughput but what After many weeks - what we first suspected and suggested proved to be the case (Network hub)
Implementation Challenges 4 Optimise Having migrated like for like risk is we do not exploit cloud flexibility to its fullest Monitor different components to better understand both normal and peak loading Review cloud server models and server specifications easier to move within A series or D series than between Review SQL configuration and clustering Bottom line is to achieve flexibility, agility and scalability
Implementation Challenges 5 Other Held to Ransom by our incumbent data centre supplier Thin client estate had been mismanaged only came to light during migration In house and inherited staff skills need more investment Transparency of reporting needs attention Better than pre Cloud but different challenges Need to push Microsoft hard, but then accessed funding
Implementation Challenges A good Partner Select some-one with proven experience for both design assistance and for implementation A partner that focussed on outcomes not time spent Need to work well with local IT staff Combination of skills and roles Agile and ready to adapt to changes in the plan be these technical or business driven If Azure that can exploit Microsoft Funding
Achieved required contract end; but not everything finished Have a stable, proven platform for IaaS cloud Simplification Strategy Thin Client and Application Packaging (Citrix review) Unified Comms (Use Cisco Jabber, Skye?) Fewer technologies to support, easier skillset to maintain Express Route review does not work with Office 365 mail Software as a Service Where Now and What Next
Where Now and What Next More flexibility in the cloud and choice of cloud suppliers Shorter contract lengths and easier to scale Cloud ready solutions built into IS strategy SaaS gives suppliers an advantage in procurement But Software vendors still adding a mark-up for SaaS compared to IaaS Exploiting the Cloud, not just swapping on premise for cloud data centre
Conclusion It was not easy, but it has been worth it Already contributing to savings targets User feedback has been positive especially on the new SCCM based self-service IT portal Software that vendors said would not work in the cloud not only does, but often performs better Working with both Microsoft and Risual to get the best from the cloud has been critical
Thank You Cloud Journey articles Published on Linked-In https://uk.linkedin.com/in/nickoreilly1 Nick O Reilly Director of Digital Services