UKCloud announces Strategic Partnership with Data Virtualisation Leader Denodo

UKCloud and Denodo announce collaboration to help public sector organisations in the UK maximise the value of their data with friction-less sovereign data virtualisation and advanced cloud capabilities

London – 15th December 2021 – UKCloud, the multi-cloud experts dedicated to making transformation happen across UK public sector, has today announced its strategic partnership with data virtualisation leader Denodo which enables customers to securely integrate and manage existing data silos, and makes it easier to adopt advanced data analytics solutions without compromising on data sovereignty and security.

There is growing awareness that maximising the value of data across public sector is essential to transform public services as set out in The National Data Strategy. It recognises that better analysis and collaboration of data holds the key to improved public services at lower cost, more efficient multi agency co-operation, reduced duplication, and increased analytical capabilities.

The recent State of Digital and Data survey by UKCloud, discovered that public sector organisations of all shapes and sizes, and across government, healthcare and defence, are regularly hampered by their data, analytical capabilities (skills), integration/abstraction (systems), and compliance. These problems are amplified as the data the public sector holds is often trapped in a hugely complex network of applications and siloed databases. This makes it difficult to find and retrieve data, as well as time consuming to translate into meaningful, actionable, and timely information.

Most solutions to this problem require public sector organisations to replace their existing data infrastructures by moving to cloud-based services. Unfortunately, many organisations store data across multiple different on-premises systems, and it is well understood that despite a decade of ‘Cloud First’, most public sector organisations still face significant time, cost and risks which are likely to persist for some time to come.

Working together, UKCloud and Denodo, the Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for Data Integration Tools, enable public sector organisations to take a different and more practical approach to these challenges. Essentially, the UKCloud and Denodo solution brings the power of multi-cloud to existing data rather than requiring the data to move into the cloud.

Federate: When building data insights from multiple, disparate data sources, it is advantageous that the sources remain in-situ. The data may be on-premises or in a variety of external and cloud sources, and organisations lack effective ways to simultaneously manage systems distributed across cloud, hosted, on-premises and edge environments. Denodo’s technology connects to data at rest, wherever it is stored, through UKCloud’s native connectivity to government grade networks like PSN, RLI, HSCN, HybridConnect as well as secure Cross Domain solutions.

Virtualise: Denodo’s data virtualisation technology creates an abstracted ‘layer’ hosted by UKCloud in a sovereign safe environment which enables public sector customers to effectively manage distributed architectures without compromising data sovereignty and security. This logical data layer provides high performant, real-time, and secure access to integrated views of disparate data across the organisation.

Deliver: On top of this logical data layer, data science and analytics create products within the prescribed governance frameworks. This makes it easier and faster for public sector organisations to access data insights from trusted data sources within an ethical framework to drive their outcomes and improve public services. And, as organisations increasingly modernise their existing systems when they reach end-of-live, UKCloud provides a sovereign, cost-effective multi-cloud platform that spans edge, on-premises, hosted and hyperscale environments.

Lloyd Rushton-Jones, Head of the UK Public Sector Business at Denodo said, “’Minimise movement, maximise value’ – this is a key design principle of our public sector customers. It makes absolute sense in utilising scarce resources quickly for social benefit, rather than wasting time, effort and power in duplication. The success of users is increasingly measured by the trustworthiness in any given minute which requires evidence from many stakeholders. Importantly, departments control their own data. However, the aggregation of datasets shared with them provides a more accurate 360 view, while access privileges preserves the security of national information. This aligns well to our strategic partnership with UKCloud where data sovereignty, UK social values and cross-government relationships have been the focus for many years.”

Lloyd went on to add, “This partnership with UKCloud provides value for public sector organisations as they work to transform essential services; this is a step-change – as our customers realise they need to “STOP collecting – START connecting” to provide UK citizens with the right information at the right time.”

This joint solution provides a pragmatic and flexible way for public sector customers to maximise the value of their existing data and take advantage of all the benefits that multi-cloud provides whilst maintaining a clear path towards digital transformation.

Steve Russell, Head of UKCloud’s Data Practice said, “Following the launch of the UKCloud Data Practice in July, today’s announcement further demonstrates that UKCloud is focused on addressing the real challenges that our public sector customers face in adopting digital technology. I am delighted that our collaboration with Denodo will help our customers reduce the time, cost and risk of achieving data driven insights to drive more successful outcomes.”

UKCloud and Denodo are here to help. We encourage organisations to start small but start now and take things forward. Now is the time to begin your digital transformation journey and move digital and cloud strategy from ambition to action.