Cloud Platform as a Service (Texas)

The Texas Cloud Platform as a Service (CPaaS) is a shared cloud-based application platform built and operated by NHS Digital.

Texas CPaaS provides an accelerator for service teams who wish to move their application to the cloud, by providing infrastructure and a full suite of functions to run services in a secure, compliant, resilient, and cost-effective way to underpin the development and support of these services.

The platform delivers over and above the NHS cloud-first strategy: it supports a step-change technical uplift to legacy services, while providing a rock-solid foundation for the next generation of cloud-native services.

The platform has been running for several years and has proven to be robust, resilient, and cost-effective, hosting a number of different tenants. To date, the platform has supported applications based on the following technologies:  PHP, Windows, Java, Node.JS, Python, Lambda.

Today Texas supports the following applications:   Directory of Services, Service Finder, NHS Cyber Alerts, Data Security & Protection Toolkit, eContract, Organisation Data Service, Electronic Prescription Service API, Breast Cancer Screening, Bowel Cancer Screening, Pathways. Others are joining in a steady flow.

Texas provides a straightforward entry point for cloud adoption and can provide a stable long-term hosting solution. Application teams who are ready to adopt fully cloud-native practices, such as serverless computing, may choose to move develop their own bespoke platform and move off the Texas platform, over time.

Texas CPaaS provides an accelerator for service teams who wish to move their application to the cloud. It also provides a number of tangible benefits.

Reduced costs

• pay for infrastructure used rather than buy what is needed for peaks in demand
• economies of scale of the platform increase the eligibility for discounts on capacity and licences.
• processes that were previously manual have been automated, reducing support costs
• cloud managed services are cheaper than running in-house equivalents
• cost transparency – as cloud resources are tagged during application onboarding

Increased service availability

• cloud technology allows us to run “active-active” across three availability zones

Shorted development cycles – enabled by DevOps practices

• automated development pipelines
• test environments on demand
• zero-touch deployments
• integration with other NHSD systems
• compartmentalised developer environments

Increased service quality

• platform based on high-quality managed cloud services, with full visibility of performance and availability
• scale of shared platform makes the use of quality tools (for example security testing) cost viable

Working practices

• accelerate the learning curve – the pre-configured platform supports the application service team to learn the tools and DevOps practices, without having to worry about designing the platform from scratch
• applications which choose to use Texas have a fast-track route through the TRG governance, as the solution is already understood and approved.

An application team can access the Texas platform by engaging with the Technical Governance process of the Technical Review Group (TRG). This will trigger an initial presentation about how the platform works and the facilities it offers

Following TRG and financial approvals, the Texas team trains the application team on the available tools and processes to do DevOps on the Texas platform as well as managing cost and usage data via CloudHealth.

Service Onboarding follows with setting account permissions, creating isolated environments  and onboarding of team members.

Texas is a Kubernetes platform for containerised workloads – which has NHSD standards, policies and guardrails applied and baked-in integration with NHSD tooling.