UK Export finance

Transforming Central Government with Microsoft Azure.

UK Export Finance | central government

The Customer

UK Export Finance is a Central Government organisation. With 350 employees, the London based organisation aims to benefit the UK economy by helping exporters of UK goods and services to win business. UKEF’s existing outsourced IT services contract was inflexible and incapable of meeting their rapidly changing organisation needs.

UKEF had some difficulties with the support on their old systems and they strived for the services of a company that could provide proactive monitoring. This was impacted by the growing costs of maintaining a partnership with their chosen vendor which culminated in UKEF looking to switch to a cost-efficient alternative, while minimising disruption to their current systems.

“We’re confident in the support we rely on risual for. When it came to deploying a virtual machine, we even had to slow your people down. It took about three hours to deploy whereas other suppliers would have taken about three weeks. It makes you more confident about what’s going on.”

LAWRENCE NICHOLS, HEAD OF IT AT UK EXPORT FINANCE

The Challenge

UKEF’s existing outsourced IT services contract was inflexible and incapable of meeting their rapidly changing business needs. UKEF had some difficulties with the support on their old systems and they strived for the services of a company that could provide proactive monitoring. This was impacted by the growing costs of maintaining a partnership with their chosen vendor, which culminated in UKEF looking to switch to a cost efficient alternative, while minimising disruption to their current systems.

There was a substantial risk that changing service providers could potentially threaten the delivery of key business tasks. However, UKEF understood that if the right partner was selected to ensure the project’s success, the switch could drive internal efficiencies and enable further growth.

Since the beginning of 2021, UKEF has turned its attention to building a secure azure environment to combat any potential risks of cyberthreats. As part of the security piece, UKEF desired to consolidate its datastores to build control, reliability and a secure foundation. Currently, data is being stored in a variety of locations, and UKEF needed control and full management of this. Alongside the data, many legacy processes were still in place, further enhancing the possibility of a cyberthreat.

The Solution

Government Digital Service (GDS) compliance sat at the very top of the list of UKEF’s priorities, meaning they were searching for a cloud-hosted and infrastructure free environment. UKEF wanted to standardise their current system, citing that they wanted something both ‘modern and mature’. Engaging with risual allowed the provider to understand the priorities, critical points and goals of the project.

With this embedded, risual worked with UKEF to develop a solution to transition all UKEF’s back office systems from their existing datacentres to the Microsoft Azure Cloud and Office 365. This involved a complete refresh of the infrastructure, which included establishing new communication links that would support datacentre services in Azure and mixture of rehosting Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows 2019, Microsoft SQL 2016, Microsoft SQL 2017 migration. A new disaggregated service would make use of the cloud, supported by specialist service providers which would replace the previously centralized model. This would be followed by the migration of key services to the virtual datacentre in Azure, establishing new management and monitoring tools and aligning with the Government Digital Service’s cloud-based strategy.

The ResultS

20% cost saving compared to their previous partnerships

Dynamic System with improved flexibility for employees

Future proofing the organisation with scalable infrastructure

Azure optimization gives the ability to continuously monitor costs

Following this, risual worked closely with UKEF to establish its current security posture, using proactive vulnerability monitoring systems to identify medium-high and medium-low risks across the azure environment. Immediate patching and fixes of all identified risks took place, and for additional security all systems were updated and modernised inline with security legislations.

risual completed an azure migration to consolidate the data assets which were stored in a variety of locations. To optimise this work, all existing legacy processes were removed and replaced with modern, agile and secure processes on the latest technology to help continuously combat the growing need for robust security.