NHS Royal Brompton and Harefield finds new secure cloud home as Privacy Shield-equipped Microsoft Azure pips rivals to the post

UK Cloud were "helpful", but ultimately too expensive compared to Microsoft alternative, reports CIO

NHS Royal Brompton and Harefield has been building a new cloud infrastructure, and Computing recently caught up with CIO Joanna Smith to find out how Microsoft Azure emerged the winner of the pilot.

After a market assessment followed by direct engagement with UKCloud through an IT procurement framework, Royal Brompton were satisfied for a time, but soon had their heads turned by a Gartner recommendation of Microsoft Azure.

"UK Cloud were helpful, but they did not put a guy on-site one day a week for three months [like Microsoft did]," observed Smith.

"And my team found their platform harder to use. But at that point we had no choice - so we had a few systems [up and running] with UKCloud."

But the real decider in the end was a fortuitous passage of time for Microsoft, as the reality of new privacy legislation began to catch up - making Azure a solid choice and raising comparative questions about UKCloud's cost.

Smith used both vendors until around September 2016, when the budget had arrived to "hit the project at pace", and Microsoft had picked up its coveted status as first cloud service provider on the US Department of Commerce's certified list for Privacy Shield - the replacement framework for the incumbent Safe Harbour principles.

"So Microsoft gained Privacy Shield in August," said Smith.

"At that point, because my guys had become more comfortable with Azure, and because Microsoft had invested more in it and because they'd got Privacy Shield, the team then said we might as well stop using UKCloud - provided that they could move stuff and put it on Azure, which was great.

"I'd been saying to UKCloud in June, ‘Look guys, you're more expensive, and when we look at you like for like - you're still cheap compared to other [vendors] - but you're looking expensive compared to Microsoft. And with Microsoft snapping at your heels, and once they've got Privacy Shield, you've lost your selling point'."

But of course, Smith continued, "The rest is history".

Royal Brompton and Harefield began to migrate away from UKCloud in late 2016.

"Only now have they announced, in the last few months, that they've lowered their costs, by which time we'd already moved it," confirms Smith.

But Smith acknowledged that vendors have pros and cons, and while Microsoft fitted this particular use case, UKCloud's advantages lie elsewhere.

"I think UKCloud, to be fair, have a very different design. Their data centres are very high quality - EMC or Cisco - a good, robust platform but inherently more expensive, whereas Microsoft perhaps go a little cheaper, but in triplicate, because if one fails, it's failed over.

"So my understanding is I can see that a smaller UK company has a cost of running, whereas Microsoft has worked that out and said, 'You know what? We're going to double it all up so we've aleways got resilience, but not waste our money on super-expensive storage."

Check back to Computing soon for the full-length interview with Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS CIO Joanna Smith.