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Creating a new NHS England: Health Education England, NHS Digital and NHS England have merged. More about the merger.

Part of NHS architecture principles

Public cloud first

Digital services should move to the public cloud unless there is a clear reason not to do so. 

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Summary

Digital services should move to the public cloud unless there is a clear reason not to do so. 


Rationale

Cloud services provide many advantages for NHS Digital, including a reduction in the time to deploy infrastructure and a significant reduction in emissions.


Implication

Digital services should be delivered from the public cloud unless there is a reason not to do so. For example:

  • service level characteristics, such as availability or recovery time objective (RTO) times, that cannot be met by public cloud
  • cyber or information governance that cannot be met by public cloud

This should be reflected in architecture designs and assessed by the Architecture Approval Group.


Last edited: 12 March 2021 1:27 pm