Architecture Excellence
the customer
Customer
Essex County Council
Website
www.essex.gov.uk
Number of employees
Approx 9000
Country or region
Essex, United Kingdom
Industry
Public Sector
Customer profile
Essex County Council, in the south of England, provides a population of 1.3million with multiple public services. They have the challenge of cutting IT spend by £32million in the next five years including a 50% reduction in desktop costs by 2015 across 9000 users and 400 buildings.
Essex County Council serves a population of 1.3million, providing multiple public services across 12 district and borough councils. The council is currently transforming into an outcome-based commissioning organisation, which risual are helping to achieve through a number of different services. The transition to a more agile ICT Infrastructure required a new model architecture to help Essex County Council to realise £32m savings on ICT expenditure over 5 years.
“risual’s architecture team gave us
confidence that not only could we achieve
our objective in a cost neutral way, but that
we would also realise end user experience
benefits, which aided our decision making
process.”
David Wilde, Chief Information Officer,
Essex County Council
“As our ICT strategy is being delivered with
the ultimate aim of going infrastructure
free, we were conscious that we needed a
stable environment to enable us to deliver
on those goals. “
David Wilde, Chief Information Officer,
Essex County Council
Given the cost challenges, any ICT modernisation needed to be considered against the background of a new IT strategy with an investment programme totalling £15million over the coming four years. Essex County Council were therefore looking for a fully costed business case to justify at least a cost neutral solution for any new deployment. The cost aspect also required a rapid and on-track delivery with consideration to security requirements and remote access to systems whilst achieving standardisation and central control.
Essex County Council were looking to deliver a model
architecture, which was focused on business requirements and ensure that end points were encrypted, that the build limited configuration at an individual level and that administration was constrained to just a few employees. They also wanted to have the option for a technical escalation process to provide them with architectural assurance. They recognised that communication of the model architecture was critical to the success of the delivery and wanted a delivery partner who was able to impart the
business change based on both from a technical knowledge basis as well as in business terms
change of business needs
Essex County Council had identified that the Council’s IT infrastructure was no longer achieving their strategy of
providing an efficient IT environment in the context of a radical transformation into a commissioning organisation. With a new CIO, David Wilde, alongside a savings challenge of £32million in the next five years and a recognition that the council was falling behind in its IT efficiency, the Council recognised that to meet their long term strategy to move to the cloud, they would need to stabilise and standardise the current environment.
Through risual’s engagement process, they worked with Essex to develop and document the vision and scope to justify and plan for the phased implementation. They approached the delivery investigating in turn; effort, cost, licensing, and the business case. As the council had previously been utilising some Microsoft
software on an ad-hoc basis, risual were also able to demonstrate the benefits of consolidating to a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement and the additional capability that the new model architecture would be able to offer.
As security was one of the core aspects to the implementation of the model architecture, risual delivered a solution that ensure the end points were encrypted, that the build was locked down to allow only limited individual configuration. From a technical perspective, risual took the vision for the model architecture and transitioned this into a delivery scenario whereby risual’s architects provided the technical assurance and expertise to ensure that the individual components worked together to a single solution. The delivery also put in place an effective change control process for any potential scope changes or elements which needed a technical steer, and provided the direction to ensure the final delivery was on track, aligned to the business requirements and communicated effectively.
Essex County Council have already experience benefits from the new architecture solution.
• Council’s new model architecture provides a stable
environment.
As a result of the deployment of the model architecture by risual, Essex County Council now have a stable environment from which to move forward to achieve its strategic objectives of a flexible and agile organisation. It also provides a stable platform for future migration to the cloud.
• Improved communication.
risual’s engagement process resulted in an effective communication for the implementation and a business understanding of the benefits.
• Techinical escalation.
Through risual’s expert knowledge of Microsoft technology, and the Microsoft stack, Essex County Council had the technical assurance that they required in a single solution.
