April 2021 marked the launch of the new IT operating model for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. After a long period where the vast majority of IT functions were outsourced to a single supplier, the council decided to move to a “right-sourcing” model. “Right-sourcing” is probably best defined as selecting best of breed components to slot together to form a service. Some may be commercial offerings, some may be in-house.
As well as defining “what” services IT will deliver, the “how” is equally important in defining a new IT operating model. Because infrastructure choices can make a dramatic difference to the effectiveness and flexibility of service delivery.
So, in parallel, over the last few months the team has moved a huge amount of infrastructure from a predominantly on-premise IT setup to being cloud-hosted (in Azure and elsewhere). We have decommissioned dozens of legacy applications as well as hundreds of physical and virtual servers as well as built up a new, skilled, in-house IT service. All of this is made possible by strong, consistent direction and leadership and letting people crack on with the work required to make it a success. A really interesting (and challenging) project for us to to have been involved in!
The next steps are well underway, including moving away from the concept of a “corporate network” to a world where access via public connectivity is the norm and the adoption of “zero-trust” as the foundation of a robust security model.
We are always happy to talk about ways in which we can help your organisation modernise its ways of working. To find out more, please get in touch.
