Client Profile

Our customer is a leading international utility to whom Version 1 has been a trusted supplier for over 20 years across a range of business and technology projects.

We are proud of our long-standing relationship with this customer and the depth of understanding and experience of the energy market that we bring to our engagements.

Long-Standing Supplier

This major international utilities supplier has a regulated asset base of approximately €9 billion with electricity generation capacity internationally. Our customer employs approximately 7,000 people.

Driver For Cloud

Our customer is focused on growing the scale and capabilities of its’ generation, trading and supply businesses to compete in the integrated national electricity markets. Operating in this highly competitive market requires flexibility and adaptability to respond quickly and effectively to change and opportunity.

Recognising that technological evolutions such as Cloud can radically shift the operating context and deliver significant competitive advantage, our customer, under a framework agreement, tendered for a strategic partner to provide cloud expertise.

Through a competitive tendering process this customer selected Version 1 who have guided the utility on its Cloud Adoption journey. The selection of the Version 1 resources was based on demonstrated expertise in the migration of enterprise applications to Cloud, substantial experience of the energy market and recognized partnerships with leading Cloud vendors namely Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Oracle.

Cloud Evaluation & Advisory Services

This customer was provided with an in-depth Cloud service evaluation to help define a clear Cloud Strategy. This consultancy process equipped the customer with expert knowledge from the beginning of their Cloud journey, thus simplifying the complexity of the organisation’s strategy for Cloud Adoption and maximising outcomes by aligning with real business objectives.

Version 1 consulted with many departments across the customer’s organisation, including senior management, in order to develop a robust Cloud Strategy which considered many business objectives, business outcomes and multiple stakeholder perspectives.

The evaluation and advisory stages for the customer included:

  • Consideration of the customer’s business goals for Cloud adoption, which is to grow the scale and capabilities of its multiple businesses
  • Reviewing the customer’s existing teams, processes and technologies in use and analysing the effects of Cloud adoption on them and on the business overall. This included how to consider new services, how to forecast Cloud usage and how to measure Cloud consumption.
  • Assessment of upcoming projects to highlight workloads that could be executed in the Cloud
  • Equipping the customer with independent and technology agnostic expertise to enable them to gain the best value from Cloud and software providers, which ultimately led to the customer’s decision to begin the Cloud journey on the Microsoft Azure platform with a hybrid-Cloud approach.
  • Governance of the Cloud adoption journey which is a key step to fully achieving the benefits that Cloud computing offers to enterprise customers. Version 1 laid out best practice principles and objectives for the journey which would ensure our customer would embark on this road to Cloud safely.

Following the planning stages, Version 1 provided the customer with the results of this Cloud Evaluation which helped their stakeholders to understand the potential implications of Cloud adoption.

It also ensured the organisation could trust that this was the best Cloud Strategy to achieve real business objectives and benefits.

Speed to Market

Version 1 conducted a maturity assessment for Cloud for our customer using an industry standard framework and this was used to build plans and road maps to achieve target maturity levels.

Version 1 produced a Strategy Document for the customer outlining priority focus areas for technology operations and to allow incremental maturity development.

In order to optimise the migration of the customer’s services to the Cloud, Version 1 aligned the early stages to upcoming strategic customer projects which were in the pipeline. The strategy enables a hybrid approach to allow safe cloud adoption for new applications alongside existing on-premise investments.

With the focused objective of delivering the pipelined strategic customer projects through the Cloud, there was an urgent requirement for Version 1 to drive change immediately throughout the organisation.

Standardisation, Governance and Financial Control

Version 1 brought to the engagement Intellectual Property (IP) that was developed to accelerate our customers journey to the Cloud; our Cloud Reference Architecture. Our Cloud Reference Architecture is a cross-platform framework that has been designed according to Cloud infrastructure best practices. Our Reference Architecture was used as a template to provide our customer with infrastructures that are optimised for performance, cost, security and compliance and were aligned to the specific requirements and targets of the customer.

Version 1 ensured effective management of the transition of our customer’s services to the Cloud by providing governance and best practice advisory services and certified technical resources.

Version 1 technical consultants built Cloud services for our customer using best practice tried and trusted methodologies and deployment and configuration of applications and workloads.

Organisational Upskilling

There was a major focus on preparing and enabling our customer’s employees to upskill for the migration to Cloud services. Organisational impact for the move to Cloud in the organisation was assessed by conducting a review of existing teams, processes and technologies in use followed by an analysis of the effects of Cloud adoption on them and on the business overall.

A training needs assessment was completed for core roles across the organisation in addition to specialised training plans for core roles. Version 1 developed a communication plan for all of the customer’s stakeholders, providing collateral such as reference decks on the customer’s Cloud Journey from a high level to an in-depth description, depending on the target audience level within the organisation.

Cloud champions were identified across the customer’s organisation and training was recommended in technical areas and also non-technical areas such as procurement.

Organisational Impact

Cloud as a Capability

Team skills in Cloud are often difficult to build and retain across the wider enterprise IT organisation. Version 1 helped to establish a Cloud Service Centre within the customer’s organisation which would support the rest of the organisation going forward, including support for all types of cloud including SaaS.

This specialist training involved Version 1 consultants working alongside their peers within the organisation in order to build Cloud competency, define Reference Architectures, operating practice, support project teams and spread Cloud skills across the enterprise, ensuring a safe path to Cloud maturity.

Next Generation Managed Services Provider

The role of the Managed Service Provider has changed in the Cloud. Cloud is changing every aspect of IT technology and associated operational processes. While a migration to the cloud can reduce effort and capacity required in many ways in the business, there are still operational processes associated with managing the Cloud that will require expertise and a new way of thinking about enterprise IT environments.

Another change that has arisen due to the constant evolution of the Cloud is that the focus is no longer placed on just maintaining a level of performance, it is now about continuous improvement and optimisation.

Version 1 ensures effective management of the transition of the customer’s enterprise estate to public Cloud, providing governance and best practice advisory services as well as project and programme management.

As an accredited partner, Version 1 offers our customer continuous improvements through our managed services partnership leveraging our experience in the areas of dynamic monitoring of Cloud resources, automation of deployment and event management.

As our customer continues to progress on the journey to Cloud, Version 1 is supporting the organisation with the delivery of strategic projects in the UK as part of the customer’s strategy for new market entry.

Real Business Benefits, Delivered