VMware gives NHS Digital a dose of hybrid to smooth path to multicloud

Shot in the arm for NHS’s digital transformation as VMware injects health service with some hybrid cloud

NHS Digital, the body responsible for NHS’s critical IT infrastructure, has made VMware Cloud on AWS available across the NHS.

VMware Cloud on AWS provides companies with a hybrid cloud, enabling firms to extend consistent infrastructure across on-premises data centres and AWS for VMware based workloads.

VMware announced its AWS integration in 2016 and followed up with a similar partnership with Microsoft Azure last week.

NHS Digital can now essentially drag and drop its VMWare workloads and applications to the cloud, and combine them with AWS services without staff having to manage them any differently.

The public body said it has already started migrating workloads to VMware Cloud on AWS, and that it will eventually migrate “most” of its services from its data centres to AWS and Azure as part of a multicloud strategy.

“We built a virtual data centre in the AWS cloud in less than three hours. That speed and agility is just what we need to harness innovation and make the best digital services available for the NHS and social care sector,” said Michael Flintoft, associate director, platforms and infrastructure, NHS Digital.

Although cloud offers rapid provisioning of services and an abundant supply of cheap storage, bureaucratic impediments to cloud adoption have taken longer to erode than in other sectors, over concerns about storing patient data off-shore.

NHS has slowly accelerated its use of cloud services, however, following NHS Digital’s publishing of its official guidance on cloud services in January 2018. The guidance permits storing of patient records on the cloud providing organisations receive approval.

Then in October UK health secretary Matt Hancock praised the public cloud and stated his intention to accelerate adoption of AWS and others throughout the NHS.

Commercial framework

The companies said VMware Cloud on AWS has enabled NHS Digital to create a new commercial model, by enabling it to act as a single cloud service broker to organisations across NHS and the UK public sector.

VMware said the model will “provide better economies of scale and help facilitate a move to cloud across the NHS”.

“We now have a commercial framework in place to enable NHS and public-sector organisations to confidently use the cloud. Together we can benefit from the economies of scale and cost efficiencies of this model,” said Rob Shaw, deputy chief executive at NHS Digital.