MDS Technologies merged with Bristol IT Company to become Assured Digital Technologies in April 2020.

As the healthcare sector evolves to using digital services, these need to be fully up to the task: well-designed and available whenever they’re called upon. The higher the profile of the service, the more important this is.

Our customer provides software to the pharmaceutical and healthcare markets worldwide. Its products are used by tens of thousands of pharmacy professionals in the UK alone.

New infrastructure, changing requirements

Two of the customer’s core products had been operating successfully in MDS’s co-location data centre for several years. With the first system’s servers reaching the end of life, the customer approached MDS to discuss how best to replace them.

Given the national prominence of the system, there was now a need for additional resilience and proven business continuity capability. This was to ensure the service would remain available even if anything happened to the data centre it was running from.

Independent assessment

To help the customer make its decision, MDS ran its Infrastructure Advisory Services, to fully understand the customer’s changing requirements for the system and recommend the best approach for the infrastructure.

Why cloud was the best option

Following an in-depth assessment, MDS advised that cloud represented the best option for the system, in that it would eliminate the capital expenditure associated with buying new servers, as well as providing the required business continuity in a cost-effective way.

Designing the platform

MDS proceeded to design the platform for the system, using UKCloud’s assured cloud infrastructure. Intelligently designed to provide full, dual-site business continuity without the cost of operating two full sets of infrastructure all the time, the MDS setup was met with approval by the customer and its partners.

The next steps on the journey to cloud

So successful has the launch and early operation of the cloud-based system been that the customer and MDS are now putting together a plan for the next steps of their journey to the cloud. This is likely to take the form of a phased migration, with services transitioning as their physical infrastructure reaches the end of life and requires replacement.