Helping a global NGO harness cloud to increase agility and reduce carbon emissions
Key highlights
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Project overview
A global NGO approached us to support migrating three data centres to the cloud, to help lower operational costs, increase system security and reduce their carbon footprint – all within a tight time frame of 6 months.
The challenge
Security was top of mind for the global NGO as they have over 14,000 members of staff and operated three data centres hosting 500 VM's across three continents.
They were experiencing issues with their current infrastructure and connections to data centres which meant essential services could not be delivered. The resiliency issues were exacerbated by the age of infrastructure, which also contributed to the rising costs of maintenance and support.
Operating in over 150 countries many of which are politically very unstable, the highest priority of the core IT team is to be able to respond quickly and securely to the ever-changing priorities from their global teams.
The solution
It was clear that cloud was the answer, we worked closely with the global NGO to create and execute a cloud-first strategy. To ensure that applications could be migrated, built, and deployed in a repeatable, secure way we built a secure landing zone to underpin all services. It leveraged automation tooling and CICD pipelines to achieve a repeatable deployment model that would allow continued expansion in the future.
With a solid foundation set up, we were then able to get to work on migrating and rationalising their estate. Using our proven methodologies, we ensured minimal disruption to business operations and provided the global NGO with a secure, performant, scalable and reliable cloud hosting platform.
We worked closely with the global NGO and Microsoft to ensure that the team felt supported throughout the full migration – a true partnership was formed. We empowered the team through knowledge sharing, ensuring they had skills and training to enable them to manage and adapt to the changing landscape. 89 of the staff at the Global NGO have completed their Azure training (234 courses, 30 certifications) and they have access to Microsoft’s Enterprise Skills Initiative (ESI) to ensure ongoing enablement of staff.
Outcomes
“You are indeed trailblazers in this space and have much to teach the rest of the NGO community”
