Kainos is 100% cloud – here's how we completed our journey!

As a global organisation, our team of industry recognised experts work across 22 countries and support 800+ customers worldwide. With this size and scale, we successfully deliver world class solutions and enhance and protect our client’s applications and platforms.

Critical to our success is the need to support access to a multitude of core applications, provide secure data storage and ensure data residency needs are fulfilled. As we continue to successfully grow into new territories, we’ve learned that having a common blueprint for success when it comes to the provision of computing power is essential.

Spinning up new environments and setting up new gear took time, and we depended heavily on third-party suppliers (many with lengthy lead times). This added risk to projects, where the expectation is often to obtain scalable processing capacity on demand.

From a support perspective, our staffing model required a large contingent of off-hours work in order to patch, configure and maintain physical gear.

Cloud migration has been transformational for Kainos. Whilst there are many advantages that go along with making the transition, here are some of the key ones:

Resilience
Cloud providers have a greater ability to ensure that services can stay online (even when hardware fails or in the event of a loss of power), due to having globally distributed data centres

Environment friendly
Migrating to the cloud allowed us to significantly reduce our carbon footprint. Initially, this was achieved through the removal of on-premise equipment and local connectivity (a massive reduction in power consumption). Then, it was achieved through the effective management of cloud services, processing power and data storage – each of which leave a carbon footprint.

Agility
By moving to the cloud, we are now able to quickly scale and spin up new instances and environments when needed.

Ease of management
Cloud opens the door for integration with a wider range of applications and platforms which can be managed from the same interface. There are also a range of  additional, useful self-service features – including password reset and group memberships.

Utilise Skills
Our teams can focus on delivering value both internally and to our customers. Traditional infrastructure skillsets easily traverse into effective management of a modern workplace.

Regional support
Cloud instances can be set up in the regions where they are needed – meeting customer needs and supporting data residency and privacy requirements.

Security
The need for physical security of servers is eliminated (although access management controls are still an absolute necessity).

Cost predictability
The management of operational spend becomes much more predictable. We’re no longer dealing with end of life physical equipment. Instead, we’re focusing on the required horsepower and associated cost plans.

Upskill your team
Ensure your team is prepared for the new way of working. Get external help for the first part of the planning and execution phase (Kainos can always help in this regard!).

Blueprints
Understand the current state picture and build a simple framework for success, based upon one or two key standards for the business. Having a common, repeatable mechanism for both the initial migration and the “business as usual” state is critical.

Cloud management
Have the right tools to measure usage and utilisation. You do not want to pay for a service that’s not in active use. Ensure your teams KPI’s reflect this, and that your organisation’s cloud needs are considered as a whole (rather than allowing a distributed model).

Data residency
Take data privacy seriously. In your cloud build-out, ensure you are meeting the regulatory needs of the business. Ensure that data is used and stored in the right location, and this is well documented and clearly understood. It’s important to properly think this through when setting up regional environments.

Not all cloud service providers are equal
Ensure you do your “due diligence” on cloud service providers. It’s essential to choose a partner that is reliable, trusted and can scale or flex to the needs of the business.

Security
If there’s a security breach or incident that is caused by the cloud provider, you must rely on the cloud provider’s ability to investigate and fix the issue to ensure that it doesn’t occur again. Whilst you would have had some control over this previously, it’s now in the hands of the cloud provider. By trusting the cloud provider to manage these aspects of security, it allows your own security teams to focus on other strategic areas – like educating staff, ensuring devices are secure, ensuring networks are designed and operate to protect communications, making sure code is developed securely, and that security is integrated into the cloud solutions that are built.

Skillset
It’s important to have people within the business with the required skillsets. For Kainos, this was initially a challenge due to our business being ahead of other organisation with our ‘cloud first’ model.

When discussing cloud computing recently, our Chief Information Security Officer came up with a great analogy: “Cloud Computing vs On Premise is like buying a car vs leasing a car”.

What does this mean?

When you buy a car, you’re responsible for ensuring that all elements of the car remain safe and roadworthy. Each year, you may need to pay for a new set of tyres, pay for it to be serviced and pay for any repairs. When you lease a car, all of those responsibilities are often overseen for you.

You’ll get a reminder to bring it in for a free service on a particular date and time, your tyres will get replaced for free, the car will be inspected for faults and repaired free of charge, and the lease company will ensure that you’re properly taxed and insured.

However, it’s still your responsibility to make sure that you have a valid driving licence. It’s up to you to drive safely within the law, and your own responsibility to stay within the speed limits. And, finally, it is your responsibility to make sure you’ve chosen a reputable lease company.

This is much like cloud computing vs building on premise.

While the cloud provider is responsible for ensuring that all the infrastructure required to keep their service online is maintained, patched, up to date and free of security bugs – it is still your responsibility to choose a reputable cloud provider that meets your business needs. It’s your responsibility to ensure that you apply appropriate controls in the solutions you build, and that you design cloud solutions within appropriate guardrails.

It’s a shared responsibility model – much like leasing a car!