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Creating a new NHS England: NHS England and NHS Digital merged on 1 February 2023. 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