Derby City Council claims 60 per cent savings in cloud-centric 'digital facelift'

Derby City Council claims 60 per cent savings from going cloud first

Derby City Council claims that it has achieved 60 per cent savings on its data centre provision since adopting the government's Cloud First policy.

The council recently switched from legacy IT infrastructure to a hybrid strategy offered by Crown Hosting Data Centres.

As a result of this change, the council expects to break even within the next two years, and it claims this revenue saving will continue throughout the lifespan of the contract.

The Crown Hosting Framework, which is a joint venture between Ark Data Centres and the Cabinet Office, is aimed at driving efficiencies within IIT teams.

Public sector bodies are increasingly coming under pressure from the government to offer easy-to-use, good-value-for-money IT services.

According to an analysis of the project, much of the council's data applications could be moved to the could easily, but a hybrid plan was needed to close the gaps.

The government launched the CHS framework to provide organisations with an affordable and efficient way to buy co-location and data hosting on flexible contracts.

Alistair Taylor, senior project manager for Derby City Council, said: "We recognised that any short-term costs involved in migrating to Crown Hosting were far outweighed by the significant revenue savings that came from highly efficient data centre provision, as well as the contractual flexibility that now enables us to continually examine our IT estate.

He continued: "Getting to grips with a new Government IT Framework could have been complicated, but everyone at Crown Hosting Data Centres was there to help.

"We were looking for something that could provide a rapid service and give us a clear and flexible programme plan to completion. That is exactly what we got with Crown Hosting."

Steve Hall, CEO of Crown Hosting Data Centres, said: "From the outset it was clear that Derby City Council were absolutely committed to the Cloud First strategy, but as they discovered and in their own words, ‘Not everything plays nicely in the cloud.'

"Crown Hosting gave them the opportunity to take data centre space which removed the need to extend often expensive contracts, and offered them a commercial arrangement with real flexibility.

"They also had the ability to swap out legacy systems for new virtualised solutions, without penalty."