Rackspace Technology upgrades Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust’s operations providing essential health services remotely

Rhea-AI Summary

Rackspace Technology has successfully migrated the Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust's IT services to a private cloud, facilitating tenfold remote staff access during COVID-19. This transition enhances service delivery for over a third of London's population, allowing 2,000 concurrent users to utilize cloud technology. The project, completed under a tight deadline, offers cost transparency and optimization for CNWL. Looking ahead, Rackspace aims to transition CNWL further to multicloud services, potentially lowering costs and improving service accessibility.

Positive

• Successful migration of CNWL to a private cloud environment, enabling significant remote access for staff.
• Improved cost transparency and optimization, allowing CNWL to pay only for necessary services.
• Demonstrated capability to scale operations without interruption during lockdown, enhancing service delivery.

Negative

• None.

LONDON, Aug. 20, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rackspace Technology™ migrated Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust (CNWL)’s IT services to a private cloud environment, allowing for 10 times more staff to provide essential health services remotely ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic.               

CNWL is one of the largest NHS Trusts in the UK, providing integrated healthcare to a third of London’s population and South of England with more than 300 different health services across 150 sites as well as offering services to customers overseas.

The first priority for Rackspace Technology was the transition of CNWL’s key infrastructure onto the cloud in VMware RPC-V, a resilient solution deployed in two data centres, as well as secure managed services. The project was under a strict deadline, which was successfully met through the help of Rackspace Technology professional services consultants.

The new infrastructure was implemented to allow many of CNWL‘s services to be offered in other ways rather than face to face with more than 2,000 concurrent home users all reliant on cloud technology.

The lockdown has proved useful as a testbed for CNWL to identify how new technological solutions can support it in providing its core services. In particular, certain more personal or sensitive healthcare areas, such as sexual health, could see a long-term move to offer more online solutions, retaining the discretion many patients desire far more easily than in-person visits.

Rackspace Technology’s work with CNWL has brought a clearer and more understandable model for costs. The cost transparency affords CNWL with cost optimisation, allowing the organisation to only pay for services it needs at any given time.

“I don’t think we’d have managed to function if we hadn’t worked with Rackspace Technology,” said Owen Powell, ICT Director at CNWL. “Most of what we do is on premise, in person healthcare so while a few people might work from home throughout the week, we have not generally operated remotely because we’ve never had to.

“We’ve made some great advances in how we interact with patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, including online tests and prescriptions as well as demos and consults over video calls. By any standards, this has been an enormous upheaval, but there was never any issue with scaling to our new requirements with Rackspace Technology and our operations were, from a technological standpoint, unaffected by the lockdown, which is remarkable.”

“While exceptional times call for extraordinary efforts, at Rackspace Technology we have long been committed to providing our Fanatical Experience,” said Tim Lovejoy, VP Private Cloud and Government at Rackspace Technology EMEA. “To have been able to support CNWL as it served its community at such a vital time was very important to us and we look forward to continuing to do so, and to our future plans as a partnership. This project has allowed us to demonstrate the cost, technical and expertise benefits of our partnership for public sector organisations.”

The next steps for the project are to continue the transition from server-based legacy systems and onto private cloud services, as well as exploring the potential to move to a multicloud model by leveraging public cloud. Using Rackspace Technology as a broker for public cloud will present an additional opportunity to reduce costs as CNWL continues to move towards its desired model.

About Rackspace Technology

Rackspace Technology is a leading end-to-end multicloud technology services company. We design, build and operate our customers’ cloud environments across all major technology platforms, irrespective of technology stack or deployment model. We partner with our customers at every stage of their cloud journey, enabling them to modernize applications, build new products and adopt innovative technologies.

Contact:

Devika Mistry
EMEA PR Senior Manager
Email: devika.mistry@rackspace.co.uk 
Mobile: 07703470339

FAQ

What impact did Rackspace's migration have on CNWL's operations during COVID-19?

The migration allowed CNWL to facilitate remote access for ten times more staff, ensuring continuity of essential health services.

How many users can CNWL support concurrently with the new cloud technology?

With the new infrastructure, CNWL can support over 2,000 concurrent home users.

What future plans does Rackspace have for CNWL's IT services?

Rackspace plans to continue transitioning CNWL to private cloud services and explore a multicloud model to further reduce costs.

What were the benefits of Rackspace's cloud migration for CNWL?

The benefits include cost optimization, enhanced service delivery, and the ability to scale operations effectively during critical times.

What technology did Rackspace implement for CNWL's cloud migration?

Rackspace implemented a resilient VMware RPC-V solution deployed in two data centers.