UKCloud and OpenStack

UKCloud is committed to providing UK Public Sector with a full suite of cloud services to assist with its transformation to digital services. As an extension of this commitment we believe OpenStack to be an ideal cloud platform for cloud native applications, designed to deliver compatibility with a full range of popular, modern open source tools and techniques.

By adopting OpenStack, we deliver an open source based solution that leverages the mature and trusted cloud platform that UKCloud is known for:

check Independently certified, by the OpenStack Foundation, as 100% OpenStack compatible check Exclusive focus on UK Public Sector
check Native compatibility with popular Continuous Integration and Delivery pipeline tools check 100% UK sovereign - the company, the staff and the data centres
check Full support for containerisation including Docker and Kubernetes check Services optimised for OFFICIAL and OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE data
check Optimised for dynamic and self-healing workloads check The only cloud provider connected to the following government networks: N3, PSN, Janet and RLI

OpenStack has established itself as the open standard cloud platform on which developers are able to build agile and elastic digital solutions that are not locked into any single cloud service provider, unlike most multi-national public cloud services.

Reasons for OpenStack adoption include:

The open source software data centre

OpenStack is an open source cloud computing platform that provides a flexible virtual data centre management platform, but built for the digital age to leverage the benefits of the software defined data centre and infrastructure-as-code.

Accelerate cloud solutions

OpenStack is the most widely adopted and familiar cloud platform supported by a large community of developers and commercial organisations. OpenStack has a global ecosystem of tools, applications and open source code, providing the building blocks to enable rapid development of digital, cloud based applications.

Standing on the shoulders of giants

OpenStack has its heritage in being developed and implemented by many global enterprises, vendors and academic institutes. It has become a mature and trusted platform, offering flexibility and choice via an active open source community of over 6,000 individuals and nearly 1,000 organisations.

Truly open, vendor neutral

OpenStack is open source, openly designed, openly
developed by an open community. It is the ideal cloud platform to support the UK Public Sector desire to avoid lock-in to propriety solutions such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or Oracle.

Build once, run anywhere

OpenStack acts as a common platform across multiple environments to provide consolidated, federated access, enabling true portability and “burstability” between Public and Private Clouds. OpenStack is a great platform to enable a multi-cloud strategy as it is compatible with many cloud management tools (e.g. Terraform by HashiCorp) and hybrid cloud frameworks (e.g. Cisco InterCloud Fabric).

Fully scalable

OpenStack is being adopted by many types and sizes of organisations looking for long-term technical, financial and strategic flexibility by avoiding lock-in to a single cloud vendor or service provider. OpenStack’s flexible API enables highly dynamic workloads that auto-scale to support the unpredictable demand of large scale citizen facing solutions.

UKCloud now offers Cloud Native Infrastructure, our OpenStack powered cloud platform designed to enhance our unique capabilities such as; assured connectivity to PSN and N3 communities, multiple security domains and 100% UK sovereignty via the most widely supported open-source API and community. Further details on our Cloud Native Infrastructure product can be found here.