NSPCC embraces mixed-cloud environment to prioritise key services

Computing chats with CIO Ray Bilsby

Every 25 seconds someone contacts the NSPCC's Childline service. This is a shocking statistic that underlines how important the work the charity provides is to helping children in abusive or neglectful homes seek help.

Behind the volunteers and support workers who provide the help and support those contacting the charity need is a raft of key technology services that are vital to the NSPCC's smooth operation.

And, just as the NSPCC has changed and evolved over its long history since being formed in 1844, so to the technology it uses to support its work requires constant overhaul.

The latest step in this ever-changing process saw the company sign a deal with managed hybrid cloud service provider Adapt to oversee the delivery of several aspects of its core IT infrastructure, including voice and communication services.

This work includes building support technology for the new Childline website and back-office systems that are going live at the end of March. All of this will be run from a private data centre that Adapt manages itself, rather than a public cloud deployment.

NSPCC chief information officer Ray Bilsby (pictured) said that using Adapt's services in this way underlines that despite numerous organisations embracing public cloud services there are still times when dedicated services are more suitable.

"If you look at the Childline service, the notion of putting that in an environment outside our control is never going to happen - we have to control the timings of patching and scheduling and activities, so testing is nailed before we launch," he told Computing.

"Childline is a complex environment, that we have to have control over and we as an organisation are willing to dig deep to pay good price to get good service for a 24/7 basis."

However, this does not mean the public cloud is not on the radar at the NSPCC. In fact, the firm has already started to embrace some core services in the cloud, most notably Office 365 hosted on Azure, and Microsoft Dynamics for case management information.

"We have started migrating to the Microsoft cloud, with things like email and storage, moving away from our previous data centre that we had managed by Capita," said Bilsby.

He noted that the flexibility of the public cloud, coupled with the low rates Microsoft offers to charities, like other providers, make it an appealing proposition, especially when compared to how services were being paid for before.

"[When I joined] the existing managed services contract was about 800 pages long and negotiated by people who had experience of government and a ‘one size fits all' mentality," he said.

"I think the big issue with that, when you look at what the NSPCC offers, from Childline to more mundane archiving activities, is that what we were paying was too consistent across the board."

Instead, Bilsby said he has pushed more for a culture where what the organisation pays reflect the importance of the service, hence why paying for a dedicated hosting and support from Adapt for Childline makes sense, as does using the public cloud for email hosting.

"If our phone systems have downtime we are putting children's lives at risk, but if our accounting system is down for a bit, it's not so important."

NSPCC embraces mixed-cloud environment to prioritise key services

Computing chats with CIO Ray Bilsby

However, while email and storage services may not be as vital as the Childline phone and support systems, the NSPCC has still embraced helped from third-parties to manage its move to the public cloud.

"When you adopt new technology the headline is always that things are really straightforward and you just sign up and off you go, but the devil in details and journey of migrated from traditional hosted services to cloud systems there are bumps in the road."

"[So] we are working with an organisation to help us with this adoption [of cloud services] to avoid some of the pitfalls others have had."

As part of the push to the cloud the NSPCC is also looking to ensure any new applications it rolls out work equally well on mobile devices, as increasingly staff work on tablets and smartphones.

"About three years ago we started down the journey of work with Telefonica and the vision there was using them as a one-stop-shop for our telecoms needs," said Bilsby.

"We're increasingly looking at adopting applications that work equally well on mobile devices as desktops as staff are increasingly the ones defining the devices they need to use help them work as effectively as possible."

Every 25 seconds someone contacts the NSPCC's Childline service

With all these changes taking place it's perhaps no surprise that the nature of the IT team Bilsby oversees is also evolving.

"There are 21 people in my team, so it's quite small, and the consequence of the changes in the technologies we are using means the shape of the team is changing quite significantly," he said.

"There is more of an emphasis on technical architectures that can understand how the technologies relate to one another."

He adds that over the years the firm has started to move away from contractors to more full-time members of staff too, to ensure it has more in-house skills that can be deployed as required to certain tasks.

All this should ensure that the NSPCC and Childline can continue to play its vital role in helping some of the most vulnerable people in society seek help and sanctuary.