A future opportunity published by Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW) has shared ambitions to plan and deliver a cloud transition programme for national digital services in Wales, seeking “one or more suppliers” to support work to migrate “circa 90 services” across “approximately 1,600 servers”.
The contract is split into three lots, with the first seeking support with technical readiness to ensure the cloud platform infrastructures “are designed and implemented to meet best practices and DHCW’s requirements”; the second lot based on analysing current infrastructure, determining “appropriate migration approaches”, and supporting the migration process; and the third lot covering activities such as training and cultural change management to “support DHCW in becoming a cloud-led organisation”.
DHCW seeks at this stage to understand suppliers’ capabilities, capacities, and approaches to providing cloud transition resources to support its aims. According to the opportunity, the organisation has “undertaken a significant amount of work to estimate costs, consider migration approach and to develop a business case”, deciding on a “migrate, optimise, and re-platform” approach whereby services are migrated “using a blend of rehosting and re-platforming services to maximise benefits and efficiencies associated with cloud hosting such as using open-source products”.
A supplier briefing is scheduled for 14 January 2025, with a “full itinerary” to be provided to suppliers expressing an interest.
Related news on cloud migration and services
At the end of October, HTN took the opportunity to sit down for a chat with Owen Powell, ICT director at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, during which Owen shared his experience of the trust’s move to cloud infrastructure with the support of Rackspace Technology; his advice for other trusts embarking on or considering a similar undertaking; and what cloud means for healthcare and innovations in the future.
Nick Roberts and Jason Jones from Rackspace Technology also joined us to discuss the benefits of sovereign cloud services, the wider market, and how cloud impacts the healthcare workforce. Digital sovereignty is “where everything end-to-end is delivered solely by UK resources, with all technology behind UK borders. That includes the tools we use, our people, and all our networks,” explained Nick. “That’s a key reason why the cloud and sovereign cloud in particular is of particular interest to our healthcare market here in the UK.”
