NHS Cloud strategy primer

This primer provides an overview of public clouds and focuses on specific areas of importance for public NHS and healthcare organisations.

Cloud Centre of Excellence - NHS Cloud strategy

Let us know what you think about the Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCOE) strategy.

The use of cloud services is essential to achieving the NHS cloud and Internet first strategy. Our cloud first policy means they are the default choice for public services.

For NHS and healthcare organisations to take part in productive discussions about digital transformation using cloud services and internet connectivity, they must first have a basic understanding of what public cloud services are, and how using them affects their organisation.

Who should read this primer

This guidance is intended for business audiences in:

NHS bodies
Healthcare providers to the NHS
business partners
government bodies working with the NHS

What is the cloud

Our strategy focuses on the use of public cloud services and internet connectivity, such as those provided by the hyper-scale cloud providers and national telecoms companies.

A simple description of public cloud services is.

Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (for example, networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction

This definition is from NIST and used as the definition of cloud computing in the Government cloud first policy.

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NHS England Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCoE) Responsibility Model

The Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCoE) has been set up to promote a best practice approach to drive the adoption of Cloud services across the NHS. It provides a centralised enablement function and supports Cloud service consumers across NHS England and the wider NHS.

What does cloud look like

To begin, it’s important to acknowledge that cloud is a vague term. Organisations often talk about 'moving or migrating to the cloud' as though it is a journey to a set destination. However, without context, it can be challenging for people to understand. The traditional method of delivering services from our servers, in our datacentre provides a tangible context that isn’t available when thinking about public cloud services. To remove this vagueness, it’s initially useful to understand where cloud services are delivered from.

The characteristics of public clouds

Public cloud services are available through several cloud service models. These models impact the way you buy, use and manage a service.

public clouds

How does the cloud change things

The cloud changes more than how we host workload.

How does the cloud change things

Is the cloud secure

For many organisations, the security of public clouds is their primary concern when assessing and planning their cloud journey.

Is the cloud secure

Last edited: 20 January 2025 11:30 am