dsp managed services

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) support

Provision of all required support services to build and maintain GCP landing zones and Production environments including, IaaS, PaaS and SaaS services available with GCP.

Features

• ITIL, responsive service desk
• Enterprise level monitoring and alerting solution
• Highly proactive stance 72% of incidents picked up via monitoring
• 24*7 support or business hours
• Flexible/elastic approach to support to handle fluctuations in support
• Highly skilled resolver groups
• Regular reporting both service desk and metric based
• Access to portals including monitor and alerts
• A rolling year of QoS data kept enabling trend analysis

Benefits

• Reduced costs
• Increased scalability to add capacity as the business grows
• Faster time to market - less worry over the infrastructure
• Flexibility and creativity - quick application deployment and changes
• Reduced downtime

£1,000 a unit a month

• Free trial available

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

• Modern Slavery statement

  ODT

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 jonathan.cowling@dsp.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 13

Service ID

439844916621487

Contact

Jonathan Cowling
+44 (0) 203 880 1686
jonathan.cowling@dsp.co.uk

Service scope

• Service constraints: All support services are provided remotely. Only cloud platform and infrastructure services are supported, end-user applications and application data are the responsibility of the customer or application vendor.
• System requirements:
  • All software products to be deployed must be licensed
  • Application specialists must ensure with current platform

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: 1 hour response times for contracted customers based upon SLA.
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: Yes
• Online ticketing support accessibility: WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
• Phone support: Yes
• Phone support availability: 24 hours, 7 days a week
• Web chat support: No
• Onsite support: Yes, at extra cost
• Support levels: There are three main support contract types: - 24/7 Proactive Support - 24/7 Reactive Support - Business Day Reactive Support Services are priced based upon the following component parts: - Scale - number of services supported - Service desk retainer - inclusive incidents All contracts will be led by a Commercial Account Manager and Technical Account Manager backed up by the wider service delivery teams.
• Support available to third parties: Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

• Getting started: Various ways. We usually have a “welcome call” and send out a take-on pack that contains a few documents and requests for information. The two main documents that are usually sent out are the Customer Service Manual (this contains a how-to guide for how our service desk works and how to use the Cherwell ticket portal) and the Monitoring Setup Requirements.
• Service documentation: Yes
• Documentation formats:
  • HTML
  • ODF
  • PDF
• End-of-contract data extraction: There isn’t much in the way of data that needs extracting for customers when their contract ends. We certainly wouldn’t remove any data from their databases/servers/technical environment.
• End-of-contract process: We have an off-boarding process that we follow which usually entails removing all customer information from Cherwell and any other necessary locations, as well as uninstalling any monitoring or connectivity that we may have in place.

Using the service

• Web browser interface: Yes
• Using the web interface: Raise Technical Service Requests Track Incidents Escalate Issues Users can not currently make direct changes to their managed environments.
• Web interface accessibility standard: None or don’t know
• How the web interface is accessible: Used through a secure browser with authentication.
• Web interface accessibility testing: Standard browser functionality assistive technology.
• API: No
• Command line interface: No

Scaling

• Scaling available: No
• Independence of resources: Each environment built and managed by DSP-Explorer is individually created with options to include dedicated resources or within a multiuse platform. Resource management is monitored and managed on a regular basis. Service options are reviewed at the outset and on an ongoing basis to ensure resource conflicts (noisy neighbours) are not impacting services.
• Usage notifications: Yes
• Usage reporting: Email

Analytics

• Infrastructure or application metrics: Yes
• Metrics types:
  • CPU
  • Disk
  • HTTP request and response status
  • Memory
  • Network
  • Number of active instances
  • Other
• Other metrics: Overarching Infrastructure Status
• Reporting types:
  • Real-time dashboards
  • Regular reports
  • Reports on request

Resellers

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

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Conforms to BS7858:2019
• Government security clearance: Up to Security Clearance (SC)

Asset protection

• Knowledge of data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Data storage and processing locations:
  • United Kingdom
  • European Economic Area (EEA)
  • Other locations
• User control over data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Datacentre security standards: Supplier-defined controls
• Penetration testing frequency: Never
• Protecting data at rest:
  • Physical access control, complying with another standard
  • Encryption of all physical media
• Data sanitisation process: No
• Equipment disposal approach: A third-party destruction service

Backup and recovery

• Backup and recovery: Yes
• What’s backed up:
  • Virtual Machines (Including OS)
  • Databases
  • Files (Most formats)
• Backup controls: Schedules are determined during design and may be altered on request via a cloud management interface. All schedules may be altered to suit a particular use case assuming sufficient storage is made available.
• Datacentre setup: Multiple datacentres with disaster recovery
• Scheduling backups: Users contact the support team to schedule backups
• 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
  • Legacy SSL and TLS (under version 1.2)

Availability and resilience

• Guaranteed availability: Availability is guaranteed by service, contract and architecture specifications. All service level agreements are underpinned by the Cloud vendor being used, all partner cloud providers can support up to and including 99.99% SLAs with associated recompense at varying values depending on the service.
• Approach to resilience: Resilience is designed to meet customer-specific requirements, however, each cloud deployment should include differing Availability Regions and or Availability Domains to ensure services continuity.
• Outage reporting: A public dashboard and email alerts.

Identity and authentication

• User authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
  • Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google apps)
  • Limited access network (for example PSN)
  • Dedicated link (for example VPN)
  • Username or password
  • Other
• Other user authentication: Authentication is implemented on a case by case basis dependent on customer requirements. All authentication methods available in any given cloud may be deployed as part of a build.
• Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels: Restricted IP and Customer access to management interfaces through access credentials to cloud interfaces, credentials are stored on centralised systems for administrative access only.
• Access restriction testing frequency: At least once a year
• Management access authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
  • Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
  • Limited access network (for example PSN)
  • Dedicated link (for example VPN)
  • Username or password
  • Other
• Description of management access authentication: Whilst management access is restricted, all-access mechanisms may be deployed for any given build architecture.
• Devices users manage the service through:
  • Any device but through a bastion host (a bastion host is a server that provides access to a private network from an external network such as the internet)
  • 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: Yes
• Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001: British assessment bureau
• ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date: 28/04/2020
• What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover: Not applicable.
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: No
• Cyber essentials: Yes
• Cyber essentials plus: Yes
• Other security certifications: No

Security governance

• Named board-level person responsible for service security: No
• Security governance certified: Yes
• Security governance standards: ISO/IEC 27001
• Information security policies and processes: We have roles and responsibilities describing a Data protection Representative and Information Security Manager. Numerous policies are in place along with tooling to support and ensure policies and procedures are compliant with ISO27001 Standards. Policy examples include GDPR, Teleworking, Asset Mgt, Data Security, Acceptable Use, Social Engineering etc.

Operational security

• Configuration and change management standard: Supplier-defined controls
• Configuration and change management approach: As a Managed & Professional Services Provider we comply with customer Change Management requirements. Professional Services changes are initiated, tracked and documented as part of any deployment along with associated risk assessments where applicable.
• Vulnerability management type: Undisclosed
• Vulnerability management approach: Collaborate with Cloud Services suppliers to monitor environments applying recommended patches and updates as available and in agreement with the customers' change schedule.
• Protective monitoring type: Supplier-defined controls
• Protective monitoring approach: Cloud Services providers provide Protective monitoring through inbuilt functionality. No additional monitoring services specifically related to protection are offered.
• Incident management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Incident management approach: Incident Management is formalised through documentation and tooling leveraging incumbent web-based tools to raise, manage, resolve and close incidents. Major incident escalation is formalised through a process from on-call support through to the third line and managerial escalation.; Incident reports may be viewed through the online portal with in-person call facilities made available as appropriate.

Secure development

• Approach to secure software development best practice: Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)

Separation between users

• Virtualisation technology used to keep applications and users sharing the same infrastructure apart: Yes
• Who implements virtualisation: Supplier
• Virtualisation technologies used: Other
• Other virtualisation technology used: Hyper-V, KVM
• How shared infrastructure is kept separate: Hypervisor security along with infrastructure security isolates users at all levels of the infrastructure stack.

Energy efficiency

• Energy-efficient datacentres: Yes
• Description of energy efficient datacentres: Oracle, Azure and Google managed DCs are all in line with the EU CoC for cloud services.

Social Value

• Fighting climate change:

  Fighting climate change

  All partnered cloud providers have released statements on Climate Change initiatives including Net Zero goals.
• Equal opportunity:

  Equal opportunity

  DSP-Explorer is committed to ensuring all staff, regardless of race, disability, gender, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, marriage or civil partnership, sexual orientation or age (protected characteristics for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010) or any other unlawful reason are treated fairly and are offered access to opportunities on an equitable basis. DSP-Explorer is committed to avoiding unlawful discrimination and will not tolerate harassment, victimisation or discrimination. Selection for employment, promotion, training or any other benefit will be based on aptitude and ability. All employees will be helped and encouraged to develop their full potential and talents, and the resources of the workforce will be fully utilised to maximise the efficiency of the company. Our staff will not discriminate directly or indirectly or harass any colleague, resident or another service user on a partner because of one of the protected characteristics above.
• Wellbeing:

  Wellbeing

  The Company has a duty to ensure that the place and conditions in which employees work serve to protect both your physical and mental welfare. The Company’s policy is to exceed the minimum requirements of the law where possible and to provide sufficient resources to fulfil this commitment. The Company will also ensure that systems are in place to maintain, monitor and, where necessary, improve safety in the workplace. Everyone working for the Company is expected to achieve these standards through commitment, co-operation and effective communication, and consider these requirements to have equal or higher priority to other business needs. The policy will be reviewed at least annually and more often if the business changes in nature or size. We recognise the value of employee/employer consultation on health and safety matters and therefore any revision needed to improve safety standards will be made in consultation with staff members.

Pricing

• Price: £1,000 a unit a month
• Discount for educational organisations: No
• Free trial available: Yes
• Description of free trial: Proof of Concepts are available for all Cloud Services. PoC pricing will be agreed in advance and will be single, transparent, fixed cost to include Cloud services, support and consultancy required to deliver against the agreed success criteria.

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

• Modern Slavery statement

  ODT

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 jonathan.cowling@dsp.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.