GOV.UK PaaS – a manner ahead

GOV.UK PaaS has been supporting authorities departments for 7 years now, operating 172 digital providers throughout 60 totally different departments. Since then, it’s turn out to be a staple to the work of digital authorities groups. And for us, it has turn out to be a go-to platform to assist authorities groups deploy and run their providers.

We’re massive followers of GOV.UK PaaS at Made Tech, and have been impressed with the nice work the group has completed to construct a easy service permitting groups to keep away from working their very own platform in the event that they don’t must.

So that you may need been as shocked as us to listen to this week’s announcement that GOV.UK PaaS is being decommissioned. This has naturally been a shock for all of us who’ve been utilizing the service for a few years and has left many questioning what comes subsequent.

GOV.UK PaaS is well-liked for a number of causes. However, put merely, it’s as a result of it permits groups to rapidly deploy their functions to an easy-to-use, fully-managed platform that wants minimal operational oversight and help. 

It offers a feature-rich ecosystem that meets nearly all of person wants whereas managing to stay a easy platform to arrange and deploy providers to. That is no imply feat – particularly when you think about these necessities! 

Being a authorities platform, it’s very important it’s a safe and accredited service. GOV.UK PaaS follows safety finest observe and is ready to help dealing with knowledge as much as the “OFFICIAL” knowledge classification, making it appropriate for many use circumstances. It offers sturdy logging and monitoring capabilities, help for quite a few coding languages, and has had an lively improvement group protecting issues updated and including new options on a regular basis.

Most essential for a number of departments is the truth that it offers a fully-managed service. This implies departments with out the in-house skillset or need to provision and help their very own infrastructure can simply use GOV.UK PaaS to get their providers dwell. And so they know there are consultants at GDS dealing with their infrastructure and help wants. This is without doubt one of the key elements that contributed to the success of GOV.UK PaaS – so no matter replaces it might want to comply with an identical mannequin.

What’s subsequent? We have now choices…

In order that brings us onto the massive query: what comes subsequent? Clearly, this isn’t one thing we will reply alone and any potential alternative wants the enter of the numerous groups who’ve been utilizing GOV.UK PaaS and now want to determine a manner ahead. 

We consider forming a neighborhood round it will permit us all to share our expertise and concepts so no matter comes subsequent works for as many providers as attainable, and taking the method of working within the open will keep away from any duplication of effort and allow a collaborative future to all of our internet hosting wants.

With 18 months till GOV.UK PaaS is turned off, we need to start this dialogue now and get as many groups as attainable concerned. We’ve already begun investigating what choices there are on the market to help our shoppers who might want to migrate from the platform in order that we will deliver our concepts and expertise to the desk.

Luckily, we’ve already been working with shoppers emigrate out of GOV.UK PaaS as their wants and capabilities have modified. We’re now trying to speed up our migration choices to supply this to extra shoppers who need to transfer their providers into different cloud platforms equivalent to AWS or Azure.

Our shut partnership with AWS and Azure places us in a superb place to analyze choices and produce their experience and enter into the broader neighborhood. Alongside this we’re starting talks with GDS about their future internet hosting plans and desires.

We’re additionally constructing a prototype internet hosting platform right here at Made Tech to switch GOV.UK PaaS with our personal fully-managed service. This can construct on the nice work that the GOV.UK PaaS group has completed through the years and supply the identical stage of help and ease of use for shoppers whereas providing a straightforward migration of providers between the platforms.

We’re in a superb place to do that because of our in depth expertise with GOV.UK PaaS and different Cloud Foundry platforms, our deep understanding of our shoppers wants, and our monitor file to rapidly flip round new providers that help the wants of our shoppers.

Whereas solely within the early phases of this journey, we’re on the lookout for early suggestions and conducting person analysis to validate our assumptions and ensure we’re constructing one thing that meets the wants of our shoppers. We plan to start onboarding our first spherical of shoppers inside the subsequent 6 months and maintain the neighborhood up to date with our findings and progress all through.

To assist us on this journey, we’d like your assist. Should you’re at present utilizing GOV.UK PaaS, we need to perceive how the decommissioning choice has affected you and what would enable you going ahead. What are your fears? What threats and alternatives will this present you? How does this impression your current roadmaps?

We plan to construct out the neighborhood of help made up of civil servants, suppliers, and cloud distributors to get a bunch dialogue going. We’ll be persevering with to weblog about this and holding webinars and different focus teams going ahead. We’ll have a prototype of our personal internet hosting platform to trial sooner or later, too. If you wish to present your ideas or take part with the neighborhood please get in contact beneath.

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