Synopsis
Tecknuovo built a container platform to help a UK central government department deliver Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) more quickly, securely and time-efficiently. The platform lets teams deliver applications 77% faster by using standardised patterns. The patterns are infinitely repeatable, promising exponential value across the department and wider government.
As part of the engagement, Tecknuovo created an application services guardrail, a library of patterns, and knowledge management and transfer to support Zero Dependency. The centre of excellence has helped drive standards, best practice and tooling for the department’s digital function.
The Challenge
Each time the department had a new requirement, it was creating a team to build a new application and platform to run it through, fully from scratch.
This was time-consuming and happening in parallel instances across the department. Teams were building near-identical solutions, reinventing the wheel to solve similar challenges. This was costing time and resource, and created governance and compliance risks that were difficult to monitor in the sprawling multi-platform environment.
Solving Today
A lightweight and flexible solution
Tecknuovo proposed to build a cloud-based container platform that would let tenants (projects and functions within the department’s portfolio) build and deploy their applications through one centralised and standardised platform.
We chose a container platform as containers are extremely lightweight, taking up minimal space and booting quickly. Containerised applications are also easier to manage, more flexible, quicker to deliver and more secure than virtualised applications.
The platform gives tenants standardised patterns for building applications, developing test automation frameworks for them, and deploying them.
Delivering efficiently
To save on time and resource, we built the platform from other components already in use at the department, including its AWS platform, CI/CD (Continuous Integration Continuous Delivery), secret storage service and security service.
We worked closely with tenants from the outset to incorporate their feedback into the build, to make sure it accurately met their requirements and to save time by making agile, iterative changes.
Building Tomorrow
Repeatable architecture and tooling
Standardisation and repeatability are the platform’s core characteristics. It gives tenants a blueprint for building and deploying an application, integrating necessary products from outside thefunction into a set of centralised platform services for building applications. This includes infrastructure and tooling configuration, guidelines on implementation, and standards on governance and environments.
As long as it is containerised, any application can be built and run on the platform. And because it is a centralised resource, it needs just one team to maintain it and provide tenants with support.
This means the platform can be used across the department and wider government, promising exponential efficiency gains and savings on taxpayers’ money.
We designed the technical documentation and knowledge around the platform to be easily transferrable to the department’s teams. We did this by working closely with guilds, making sure the design aligned with the department’s and teams’ ways of working.
Results
Fast delivery, huge cost savings
Building and running these applications through the centralised platform has sped up deployment and slashed costs significantly:
- Teams can deploy applications 77% faster, in 10 weeks down from 10 months.
- Teams can build testing automation frameworks 71% faster, in four weeks down from 14.
- The platform is estimated to save £2.25m per onboarded tenant
- Matured FinOps has enabled a 70% reduction in cloud consumption costs.
Delivering Critical National Infrastructure
Four tenants have successfully onboarded to the platform. This includes Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) that needs to run meticulously to monitor and safeguard trade through the UK’s borders:
- A cross-border goods transit system: enables traders to process declarations for goods moving between the UK and partner countries under international transit arrangements.
- A duty-suspended goods tracking system: a UK and partner-country system for recording the movement of duty-suspended excise goods (goods that become subject to per unit tax at the point of sale, such as tobacco and alcohol).
- A trader authorisation validation system: lets buyers validate authorisations on traders before allowing them to move excise goods under duty suspension.
- An automated payments instruction service: automates the transfer of direct debit instructions between the department and payment service providers, saving time for internal teams and users.
Focus on the cross-border goods transit system
The Challenge
The cross-border goods transit system is a Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) system within the department. It lets traders process goods moving through UK borders under international transit arrangements, delaying import declarations and duties until the goods reach their destination.
The system has been operational since 2003. It has gone through multiple iterations to improve operations and comply with new requirements. In previous iterations, this work was taking up months of resource every time.
The Solution
Tecknuovo’s central DevOps platform team supported the in-house team as they used the platform to build and deploy the new iteration of the system. The team deployed the new application quickly, easily and securely, thanks to the pre-approved and standardised tools, processes and guardrails offered by the platform.
The Results
The platform-deployed new iteration is now supporting a live piece of CNI that is helping the department’s borders and trade function seamlessly manage goods transiting between the UK and partner countries.
Running on the DevOps platform will improve future iterations too, in terms of the application’s efficiency and the ease of building and deploying. It will let teams quickly and easily modernise the application, minimise downtime through blue-green deployment patterns, and manage cost through improved FinOps practices.
