AWS Case Study – DCLG Datamart

About

The Department for Communities and Local Government’s (DCLG) purpose is to support the creation of great places to live and work, and to give more power to local people to shape what happens in their area. In 2015, the department chose Arcus Global to build a secure platform on AWS for hosting its applications.

Challenge

The team at DCLG had to create a platform for securely hosting a number of externally facing applications that they needed to put it in place very quickly. Designing and commissioning traditional infrastructure would have taken too long and they were keen to try a Cloud approach, although concerned about whether it could offer them both cost savings and a high level of security.

Why AWS?

Arcus proposed AWS and DCLG chose it because:

1. The range of services could support both the traditional SQL Server infrastructure required by one of their legacy apps and the new services used by their MarkLogic-based applications.

2. Arcus’ security experts were able to create a design on AWS that had sufficient controls to host DCLG’s ‘official sensitive’ data.

3. The AWS solution could be delivered within DCLG’s aggressive timescales.

4. The cost of the solution was considerably lower than other options but offered excellent resilience.

5. The Cloud solution offered the ability for the new platform to scale easily as DCLG brought more applications online.

Benefits

1. Rapid delivery so that DCLG could meet its aggressive timescales.

2. Easy scalability & high resilience – DCLG has been able to expand Datamart to add new applications as well as common payments, reporting and data warehousing functionality. The platform now routinely handles over 150,000 requests a day.

3. High security – Datamart has passed multiple penetration tests and successfully protected ‘official sensitive’ data for over two years.

“Arcus built and runs our cloud infrastructure which hosts some very sensitive applications. This is more secure and resilient than its predecessor and has provided significant cost savings. They are a true partner, pro-actively suggesting improvements, overcoming obstacles and consistently delivering a great service.”
Jack McGarrigle, Head of IT Applications – DCLG