Clerkswell

Azure Consultancy Service

Azure consultancy services, from end to end planning, design, migration and support. Our services cover the key Azure workloads. Service may include project management, technical design and architecture, Azure cloud and hosting with support, testing, training and reporting.

Features

• Azure licencing procurement, technical architecture & consultancy
• Discovery, design and migration to Azure
• Azure Proof of Concept
• Azure implementation

Benefits

• Certified platform experts
• Rapid deployment of Azure services
• Use our established n-boarding framework
• Get the tailored Azure support you need
• Implement best practice for Azure
• Reduce costs associated with on-premise environments
• Architectural guidance and code review
• Automatic scaling to cope with high traffic volumes
• Back up and DRaaS
• Web application optimisation

£750 to £1,100 a unit a day

• Education pricing available
• Free trial available

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at hello@clerkswell.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 13

Service ID

358484218578901

Contact

Olivia Brookhouse
02076898800
hello@clerkswell.com

Service scope

• Service constraints: No
• System requirements: Microsoft Azure

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: • Urgent items- Immediate; • High items- 2 hours; • Medium- 16 hours; • Low – agreed on a case by case basis; ; • Support will be available from 9am – 6pm, Monday to Friday (excluding any UK public or bank holidays).; • Support can be provided for out of hours’ deployments. These must be pre-arranged.; • Any request for services on a 24/7 basis can be provided with prior agreement on level of emergency and will be covered at a specific rate outside of this SLA.
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: Yes
• Online ticketing support accessibility: None or don’t know
• Phone support: Yes
• Phone support availability: 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
• Web chat support: No
• Onsite support: Onsite support
• Support levels: Our support offering is very flexible and completely tailored to our customers’ requirements. We have clearly delineated support levels based on the priority rating of the issues (this is decided by the customer). ; Our support costs are dictated by the hours required and are based on our standard day rate. If 24/7, weekend support, or simply an extension of our standard 9-5 support hours we will arrange this based on the individual requirement of the customer.; ; • Support will be available from 9am – 6pm, Monday to Friday (excluding any UK public or bank holidays).; • Support can be provided for out of hours’ deployments. These must be pre-arranged.; • Any request for services on a 24/7 basis can be provided with prior agreement on level of emergency and will be covered at a specific rate outside of this SLA.; ; Every project has a project team composed of an Account Manager, Project Manager, Digital consultant, and Technical Lead.
• Support available to third parties: Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

• Getting started: We start our projects with an onsite kick off meeting to review and interrogate your requirements in detail.
• Service documentation: Yes
• Documentation formats:
  • HTML
  • PDF
• End-of-contract data extraction: Everything which we build belongs to the user. We claim no ownership over the code or data.
• End-of-contract process: We require three months’ notice to change or end a contract and at the end of each project we provide a project handover.

Using the service

• Web browser interface: No
• API: No
• Command line interface: No

Scaling

• Scaling available: No
• Independence of resources: The Microsoft Azure infrastructure handles resource balancing. Based on the particular types of virtual machine deployed and their internal algorithms for traffic routing and site isolation, the datacentre systems Azure provide ensure that sites remain independent.
• Usage notifications: No

Analytics

• Infrastructure or application metrics: No

Resellers

• Supplier type: Reseller providing extra features and support
• Organisation whose services are being resold: Microsoft

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Staff screening not performed
• Government security clearance: Up to Security Clearance (SC)

Asset protection

• Knowledge of data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Data storage and processing locations: European Economic Area (EEA)
• User control over data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Datacentre security standards: Managed by a third party
• Penetration testing frequency: Never
• Protecting data at rest:
  • Physical access control, complying with CSA CCM v3.0
  • Physical access control, complying with SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
  • Other
• Other data at rest protection approach: Data is encrypted at rest using Bitlocker drive encryption
• Data sanitisation process: Yes
• Data sanitisation type:
  • Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
  • Hardware containing data is completely destroyed
• Equipment disposal approach: A third-party destruction service

Backup and recovery

• Backup and recovery: Yes
• What’s backed up:
  • All aspects of the system can be backed up.
  • Databases, virtual machines and file storage
• Backup controls: We agree this with our client depending on their requirements.; Any backups are performed via the Azure portal. Infrastructure level backups will be configured to run automatically, to strike a sensible balance between the costs of storage and maintenance they incur, and the client’s requirements for disaster recovery and support budgets.
• Datacentre setup: Multiple datacentres with disaster recovery
• Scheduling backups: Users schedule backups through a web interface
• Backup recovery:
  • Users can recover backups themselves, for example through a web interface
  • Users contact the support team

Data-in-transit protection

• Data protection between buyer and supplier networks:
  • Private network or public sector network
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
  • Legacy SSL and TLS (under version 1.2)
• Data protection within supplier network:
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • IPsec or TLS VPN gateway

Availability and resilience

• Guaranteed availability: Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure provides at least 99.9% guarantees for the infrastructure and services it provides. The uptime guarantees are managed automatically by the Azure infrastructure. It provides automatic replication (and optionally geo-replication) of all stored data to prevent downtime from hardware failures, and the infrastructure fabric can silently switch between locations for data if issues are detected.; Services deployed using PaaS techniques can be configured to automatically swap in and out instances which are not behaving optimally. This allows a guarantee of 99.95% for availability.; Deployment via IaaS techniques, where the service is deployed into multiple “availability groups” is guaranteed to have 99.95% uptime for virtual machines.; For some Azure services, clients can opt to pay for a higher availability tier if they wish. This is commonly 99.95% but may vary depending on the services in question.; Any deployment built on top of Azure (IaaS, PaaS for Sitecore or UaaS) takes advantage of these features. However these guarantees apply to the underlying infrastructure only – the software running on top of the infrastructure (ie Sitecore or Umbraco) is not directly guaranteed by Microsoft .
• Approach to resilience: Microsoft Azure’s infrastructure has been built specifically with resilience in mind. The “Azure Fabric” services which manage the system have a variety of features built in which work to ensure that the services provided by Azure are as resilient as possible.; ; All data in Azure’s storage layer is replicated in triplicate in a data centre. This ensures that the loss of individual drives or racks does not cause the loss of data. When a deployment is configured, it is also possible to add geo-replication of data. This ensures that all data is kept in triplicate in a second physical data centre as well.; ; When infrastructure such as virtual machines is deployed, they can be configured in “availability groups” where multiple VMs serve the same site. This allows the failure of one machine to be covered by the remaining machines until errors are addressed.; ; With platform-as-a-service deployments, the individual “workers” in a deployment are effectively disposable. The infrastructure underlying the service is able to create and destroy them as necessary. This means that if a hardware or software failure causes some to stop working correctly they can be replaced from Azure’s pool of free resources automatically and quickly.
• Outage reporting: Any outages are reported via a public dashboard.

Identity and authentication

• User authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Username or password
  • Other
• Other user authentication: The Microsoft Azure service can deliver the authentication solution required for each specific engagement.
• Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels: For Azure the roles control all aspects of the management process – what functions can be performed and what resources can be accessed for a particular subscription.
• Access restriction testing frequency: At least once a year
• Management access authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
  • Dedicated link (for example VPN)
  • Username or password
• Devices users manage the service through: Directly from any device which may also be used for normal business (for example web browsing or viewing external email)

Audit information for users

• Access to user activity audit information: Users contact the support team to get audit information
• How long user audit data is stored for: User-defined
• Access to supplier activity audit information: Users contact the support team to get audit information
• How long supplier audit data is stored for: User-defined
• How long system logs are stored for: User-defined

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: No
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: No
• Cyber essentials: Yes
• Cyber essentials plus: No
• Other security certifications: No

Security governance

• Named board-level person responsible for service security: No
• Security governance certified: No
• Security governance approach: The Azure platform complies to all standards detailed within the Microsoft Security and Compliance Centre.
• Information security policies and processes: Owners are designated for all critical components. These systems and assets are fully documented and have defined security requirements around change management. These include an audit trail and a reporting structure through each business unit to the board where risks are discussed before any production changes. Employees are held accountable to breaches of these agreed procedures.

Operational security

• Configuration and change management standard: Supplier-defined controls
• Configuration and change management approach: All code in development is held securely within a version controlled source control system (Visual Studio Team Services). All code goes through an internal review process before being released to a quality assurance environment. Once there is it subjected to further review and security testing before release to the production environment.
• Vulnerability management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Vulnerability management approach: The product is built on the Microsoft and Azure platforms and ClerksWell actively monitors official and unofficial channels for threats to those platforms and the protocols around them. When a threat is assessed that impacts the website, patches can be deployed as soon as a mitigation is available.
• Protective monitoring type: Undisclosed
• Protective monitoring approach: Potential compromises would be detected via the built-in monitoring technology for the systems involved. Unexpected increases in load on servers, unexpected errors in log files, unexpected audit data or files on disk and site performance decreases are all indications that we would follow-up on. In all cases our response will be a detailed examination, to determine the cause, ensure we understand what follow-up is required and report back to the client. Response times will follow our agreed SLA with the client.
• Incident management type: Undisclosed
• Incident management approach: Defined processes exist for responses to outages and compromises (real or suspected). These processes are rehearsed on a regular basis. Users report incidents via a helpdesk or direct communication with a named customer services representative depending on the severity of the problem. Customer incident reports are provided via the helpdesk.

Secure development

• Approach to secure software development best practice: Supplier-defined process

Separation between users

• Virtualisation technology used to keep applications and users sharing the same infrastructure apart: Yes
• Who implements virtualisation: Third-party
• Third-party virtualisation provider: Microsoft
• How shared infrastructure is kept separate: The Azure Fabric services ensure separation between tenants on their infrastructure. It uses a variety of technologies:; ; • Authentication and role-based security is required for all access to the management portal its APIs and the Azure resources you own.; ; • Data encryption keys are specific to individual Azure accounts.; ; • Networking Virtual prevents network traffic from one account reaching resources in another.; ; • Hardware Virtualisation security prevents resources running on a server from interacting.

Energy efficiency

• Energy-efficient datacentres: Yes
• Description of energy efficient datacentres: Customers may request or provide a list of Code of Conduct Practices implemented in the relevant data centre to assist in procurement of services that meet their environmental or sustainability standards.

Social Value

• Equal opportunity:

  Equal opportunity

  ClerksWell is committed to promoting a supportive and inclusive culture for all of our employees and customers. We aim to ensure that no job applicant, employee or customer experiences less favourable treatment on the grounds of race, colour, nationality, religion, ethnic or national origin, age, gender reassignment or parental/marital status, sexual orientation or disability. By integrating individual strengths, we will maximise efficiency and creativity, and deliver greater customer service.; ; Aims:; ClerksWell will work to ensure that employees are:; •Treated fairly and without discrimination during their employment, commencing with the recruitment process and have access to promotions when available based on merit.; •Fairly appraised and rewarded for personal contributions to the organisation, taking into account internal and external comparisons and affordability.; •Able to work in a healthy and safe environment free from hazards.; •Able to access opportunities for training and development to develop to their full potential.; •Supported in balancing work and home life commitments and have requests considered objectively.; •Treated with dignity and respect in a fair and consistent manner in an environment where inappropriate behaviour is not acceptable.

Pricing

• Price: £750 to £1,100 a unit a day
• Discount for educational organisations: Yes
• Free trial available: Yes
• Description of free trial: 1 day free workshop

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at hello@clerkswell.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.