Cloud discovery audit for Cambridgeshire County Council

Challenge

We were asked to conduct an evaluation of an ongoing cloud migration project for LGSS, a shared services company owned by Cambridgeshire County Council, Northamptonshire County Council and Milton Keynes Council. The aim was to evaluate cloud migration for Cambridgeshire County Council and recommend possible next steps.

Our approach

We began by conducting onsite interviews that allowed us to get a clear understanding of the entire application estate. This work was carried out across council domains in order to evaluate the risk that core systems posed. We also undertook a migration options analysis to assess automation and virtualisation, and to assess what IaaS and PaaS knowledge existed.

As part of the audit, we looked in detail at two specific areas – the forthcoming shutdown of a data centre and a series of Oracle Weblogic applications that were running on premise. We also undertook a skills analysis to assess whether DevOps capability was in line with what the digital team needed to create modern digital services.

Inside page and front cover of the Local Government Association's Transforming local public services book

Advances in high-speed broadband and data storage now offer councils the opportunity to buy ICT services as and when required, rather than having to invest in a fixed infrastructure of hardware and software that is both expensive to buy and costly to maintain.
From the Local Government Association’s Transforming local public services

Results we achieved together

We provided a strategic roadmap and tactical steps for rehosting and replatforming applications in the cloud. This involved rehosting to address the data centre shutdown and then replatforming to introduce automation efficiencies. To enable this, we also recommended professional development in cloud practices and automation.