This organisation is one of the world’s largest charitable foundations and one of the biggest sources of non-governmental funding for scientific research globally.
The Challenge:
This organisation sought a partner to provide consultancy and support as they began their transformation journey. Understanding the increasingly significant role that technology and data will play in the future of the organisation they recognised that their cloud and application strategies would form a critical framework to underpin their broader business transformation. This included a desire to move to a ‘Cloud First’ hybrid model and the adoption of DevOps to underpin the transformation in a virtuous circle of continuous improvement.
The Solution:
Current State
Time was taken to investigate the current state across services, applications and data in addition to contracts and licensing. Interviews were conducted with business leaders and technology staff to understand processes, business priorities and requirements.
Benchmarking
The current delivery was then compared with industry and wider best practices to identify opportunities for improved delivery and cost savings.
Proposal
Our proposal contained an outline of possible future models with pros and cons, along with recommendations including fully costed financials, migration plans, implementation plans, risk assessments and rollback plans. This was set clearly in the business context and in accessible terms that facilitated business decision making.
Delivery
The foundational transformation project was organised into three distinct workstreams aligned to business needs. Each stream was planned with priorities to gain business benefits balanced with continuity and security to ensure systems maintained current or improved levels of performance and resilience throughout.
Business Benefits
Major savings in costs and improved efficiency have been gained and continue to be delivered. The footprint rationalisation strand has provided savings in power, data centre cooling, hardware support, software licensing and ongoing maintenance and support requirements due to a simplified infrastructure. The process itself also developed new paths of communication which will be crucial in the future as data and technology plays an ever-increasing role in the lives of the staff.