London Borough of Bexley partners with ANS to modernise its digital infrastructure

London Borough of Bexley (Bexley) provides services for approximately 150,000 residents in southeast London, along with millions of tourists visiting the area. The council is responsible for servicing local businesses across 9 service areas and providing over 176 resident services, including planning, recycling & rubbish, council tax, housing, parking, benefits & support.

It is one of the largest employers in the area, with over 700 people working full-time and part-time across the district.

Challenge:

Bexley had been on an infrastructure journey from using an on-premise data centre in 2015 to a colocation datacentre for private cloud in 2018. However, these traditional environments were restricting the council from innovating and being efficient.

In the current challenging economic conditions, Bexley, like other government bodies, was constrained on budget and needed to ensure optimum value from its technology investments.

Solution:

Bexley decided to modernise its digital infrastructure to drive operational efficiencies, excel in service delivery, reduce carbon footprint and maintain financial stability. Microsoft Azure was identified as the right choice to meet all the above requirements, offering cost-effectiveness, robust security and a superior user experience.

Bexley is an out-of-London borough, so it doesn’t receive the same resources and budgets as other county councils. Therefore, the council sought an expert Azure partner who could guide the team from the planning stage all the way to migration and support.

Expected outcome:

To help achieve its business objectives, Bexley partnered with ANS through its free Cloud Migration Navigator assessment. As part of this, ANS conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the council’s existing infrastructure and future vision and then provided a transition plan and business case to be submitted to the board to support its Azure migration strategy.

Bexley then awarded the cloud migration project to ANS and will receive ongoing 24/7/365 support and optimisation beyond migration using ANS’ Azure co-managed services. This will ensure the cloud environment is optimised for cost, performance, and security in line with Microsoft’s best practices. Bexley also plans to deploy Microsoft Sentinel to improve its cloud defence posture and strengthen security later this year.

James Scott, Head of ICT & Digital at London Borough of Bexley, commented: “We’re really excited to have partnered with ANS on our Azure modernisation project and are looking forward to getting started. ANS has really understood our requirements and shown us they are capable of delivering this project and bringing us more efficiencies in Azure.

We also chose to work with ANS due to their end-to-end Microsoft Azure capabilities spanning not only infrastructure but also data & AI, and cyber security. This allows us to lean on a partner long-term to help us unlock our full potential when it comes to digital.”