'Cloud is at an inflection point': Kubernetes specialist Appvia on being selected by Bank of England to lead its cloud transformation

Appvia was selected to lead the transformation project from a long list of 46 suppliers

At the start of this year, the Bank of England put out a tender for "an experienced partner to assist in design, construction and assurance of a modern, fit for purpose cloud environment."

The plan is part of the central bank's ‘One Bank, One Mission' strategy to "create a single, unified institution - One Bank - that will maximise its impact by working together across all its functions," a transformation which will see it make much greater use of public cloud and cloud native technologies to deliver on a vision outlined by previous governor Mark Carney in a 2019 speech entitled A platform for innovation.

Since then, of course, the pandemic has intervened, but in December the bank announced that it had selected London-based cloud native consultancy Appvia from the 46 applications completed (18 from SMEs, 26 from large firms) to lead the transformation. Covid has certainly made things more difficult, said CEO Jon Shanks, but work is under way in scoping out the work, which will eventually involve other SMEs as well as some big integrators (he mentioned early conversations with Avanade) and cloud firms.

Appvia, a 40-strong, London-based consultancy which specialises in ‘productising' software like Kubernetes, making it easier and more secure to deploy, has previously worked on cloud-based modernisation projects with the Home Office. Appvia's main role in the BoE's transformation will be one of coordination, said Shanks, although currently much of the project is still at the scoping stage.

"They have started modernising some things. They have the skills and knowledge internally, but it's about avoiding the pitfalls and working with a partner to strategise how you operate around cloud in the right way," he said.

"We will help them understand where they are at the moment - how they work, how the teams are structured - versus the new world, then to create a plan of how to get there."

Microsoft Azure is the primary cloud being used in the transformation, and as well as skills with that platform the tender document asked for Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) qualifications and experience with microservices to make the bank's applications cloud-ready, in line with delivering the ‘platform for innovation' that Carney described.

"The bank is changing in ways that are quite substantial," Shanks said.

"They're trying to move to be more of a product-centric organisation, which is much bigger than just adopting cloud because it's also changing ways of working. Like with many companies, there's a need to modernise, and cloud has matured so much in terms of breadth of service and security that there's now an inflection point."

The pandemic has only helped to bring this inflection point into sharper focus, he added.

The Bank of England declined an interview, but in a statement from Oliver Tweedie, Head of Digital Platforms at the Bank of England.

"We have selected Appvia as our Cloud Delivery Partner to help us realise the Bank's cloud ambitions and unlock the potential of the cloud. Appvia come with a great pedigree and a wealth of experience delivering cloud services within government. Working in collaboration with Bank Technology teams, Appvia will help us shape and build the future of cloud services across our organisation - a key part of our technology strategy."