Six Degrees Technology Group Limited

Community Cloud IaaS for Central Government

Our IaaS is an automated infrastructure environment that enables digital services, complex, and evolving application and infrastructure requirements. The service is ideal for both test & development as well as production environments and is used for digital transformation, windows & Linux hosting, transactional systems, and legacy workloads, including Oracle hosting.

Features

• Flexible deployment; via API, self-service portal or Six Degrees assisted
• Infrastructure automation and orchestration. VMware vCloud & OVM
• Secure N+1 UK data centres. Data never leaves the UK
• Choice of virtual and bare metal physical resource
• ITIL-based service delivery management and reporting
• Includes compute, storage, backup, DR and support service options
• 24x7x365 availability, service desk, support, monitoring. 99.99% SLA/ availability guarantee
• Hybrid (multi) cloud options include AWS and Microsoft Azure
• On-site and off-site Backup and DR available
• Connect via WAN, internet, PSN Assured or PSN Protect

Benefits

• Hosting for digital services; applications, websites, portals and intranets
• Automation to simplify processes and reduce cost
• Easy to use. Supports containers; Docker, Swarm, Cloud Foundry, etc.
• Build new digital citizen services in secure UK sovereign environments
• Rapidly deploy and scale servers and storage resource
• Automate the deployment and installation applications and digital services
• Supports any application that runs on x86 architecture
• Move your legacy workloads to the cloud to reduce cost
• UK based dual site resiliency, including ARK (by Crown Hosting)
• Green services designed to improve efficiency and reduce carbon waste

£0.01 a virtual machine an hour

• 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 Publicsector.sales@6dg.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

498337261767401

Contact

Six Degrees' Public Sector team
08000128060
Publicsector.sales@6dg.co.uk

Service scope

• Service constraints: No
• System requirements:
  • Requires min. 10 Mbps standard networking (includes reserved bandwidth)
  • X86 operating system and application (non x86 options available)

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: For priority 1 and priority 2 the response SLA is within 30 minutes and for P3 it is within 1 business hour.
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: Yes
• Online ticketing support accessibility: WCAG 2.1 A
• Phone support: Yes
• Phone support availability: 24 hours, 7 days a week
• Web chat support: No
• Onsite support: Yes, at extra cost
• Support levels: Full support of services are provided as standard via the Public Sector Support Desk. The Support Desk is open 24x7 taking receipt of P1 and P2 incidents, with P3 issues being handled in business hours. The Support Desk is manned by 1st/2nd line support engineers and has direct escalation to the operations team where full 3rd line support is provided. ; ; Six Degrees also provide additional support services such as O/S and application monitoring, server support, patch management, managed backup, and managed DR services. Pricing is provided either per server or as a flat service fee depending on the size of the environment.; ; All customers are allocated a service delivery manager who is responsible for ensuring the smooth delivery of the service, acts as an escalation point for all incidents, and provides full monthly service reporting.
• Support available to third parties: Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

• Getting started: Our services are simple to consume requiring only a browser (and in the case of VMware vCloud a small plug in to be installed). New customers are asked to provide a list of authorised contacts and permission levels with whom we can engage. Those nominated individuals are provided with documentation and if need-be training on how to contact us for support, how to access the ticketing/monitoring portals and how to use VMware vCloud.; All customers are provided documentation for using the Six Degrees IaaS. Six Degrees can also run individual and group training sessions for using these clouds. The sessions are delivered via WebEx or face-to-face.; At a base level Six Degrees don’t charge customers to on-board/off-board from the Six Degrees IaaS. Should an organisation require additional support as part of the on-boarding process, such as project management/detailed technical design, then Six Degrees might need to charge for this. This will be charged as time and materials or as a pre-agreed flat service fee. ; Once engaged with Six Degrees and a contract has been signed we’ll provision a resource area and grant the user access to our self-service portal and ticketing system where support and service requests can be made.
• Service documentation: Yes
• Documentation formats:
  • HTML
  • PDF
  • Other
• Other documentation formats: Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Viso formats are available.
• End-of-contract data extraction: Customers can export their servers to a OVF format and download to their local machines. Where necessary Six Degrees Service Desk can provide solutions for large or complicated migrations away from Six Degrees.
• End-of-contract process: Six Degrees do not charge for off-boarding as standard and organisations can exit the Six Degrees service without penalty. Where reasonable, Six Degrees will support the client exit of the service, export virtual machines, and decommission resource. If full project management or large-scale support is required, then Six Degrees reserve the right to charge the client. This will be agreed in advance, prior to termination.

Using the service

• Web browser interface: Yes
• Using the web interface: Six Degrees have a vCloud Director portal to allow customers to fully manage their environment, such as building, editing and removing resource.
• Web interface accessibility standard: WCAG 2.1 AAA
• Web interface accessibility testing: Six Degrees have not undertaken any direct testing with assistive technology although the vCloud Director Portal provided for customers to access the environment has undergone rigorous assistive technology testing from VMware. Therefore the Six Degrees IaaS is able to support users with disabilities and special requirements.
• API: Yes
• What users can and can't do using the API: All actions that you can perform by the GUI can be achieved via API.
• API automation tools:
  • Ansible
  • Chef
  • SaltStack
  • Terraform
  • Puppet
  • Other
• Other API automation tools: Ernest
• API documentation: Yes
• API documentation formats:
  • HTML
  • ODF
  • PDF
• Command line interface: Yes
• Command line interface compatibility: Linux or Unix
• Using the command line interface: All actions that you can perform by the GUI can be achieved via the CLI

Scaling

• Scaling available: Yes
• Scaling type:
  • Automatic
  • Manual
• Independence of resources: Storage is sold based on fixed IOPS, meaning performance is guaranteed irrespective of other user requirements. We can also provide dedicated virtual and bare metal resource for customers who want to further protect their environment.; ; All customers pay for reserved bandwidth. Six Degrees monitor shared inbound connections at our peering level. If a customers usage becomes unusually high we will be alerted. Where necessary customers traffic will be restricted or black holed (in a DDoS attack) to protect our other customers bandwidth requirements. DDoS service options, both Layer 3/4 and Layer 7, are available as chargeable services should customers require.
• Usage notifications: Yes
• Usage reporting:
  • API
  • Email
  • SMS

Analytics

• Infrastructure or application metrics: Yes
• Metrics types:
  • CPU
  • Disk
  • HTTP request and response status
  • Memory
  • Network
  • Number of active instances
  • Other
• Other metrics:
  • Availability
  • Running Services
• Reporting types: API access

Resellers

• Supplier type: Not a reseller

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Other security clearance
• Government security clearance: Up to Developed Vetting (DV)

Asset protection

• Knowledge of data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Data storage and processing locations: United Kingdom
• User control over data storage and processing locations: No
• Datacentre security standards: Complies with a recognised standard (for example CSA CCM version 3.0)
• Penetration testing frequency: At least once a year
• Penetration testing approach: ‘IT Health Check’ performed by a CHECK service provider
• Protecting data at rest:
  • Physical access control, complying with CSA CCM v3.0
  • Encryption of all physical media
  • Other
• Other data at rest protection approach: SAN storage encrypted at rest. Customer can use own encryption at the OS level.
• Data sanitisation process: Yes
• Data sanitisation type: Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
• Equipment disposal approach: Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v.30, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001

Backup and recovery

• Backup and recovery: Yes
• What’s backed up: Backups can be taken of server states and data repositories.
• Backup controls: Backups are configured to the customers requirements via the service desk.
• Datacentre setup: Multiple datacentres with disaster recovery
• Scheduling backups: Users contact the support team to schedule backups
• Backup recovery: 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
  • Other
• Other protection between networks: A virtual private network is created for each customer. This is logically isolated from other networks and each are controlled by a firewall for security.
• Data protection within supplier network:
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
  • Other
• Other protection within supplier network: A virtual private network is created for each customer. This is logically isolated from other networks and each are controlled by a firewall for security.

Availability and resilience

• Guaranteed availability: Six Degrees offer a 99.99% availability SLA on all components up to the OS.
• Approach to resilience: All components have been built in fully resilient pairs. With fully resilient networking links between all components and to external third parties, including multiple ISPs. For host availability Six Degrees use VMware’s HA failover for redundancy.
• Outage reporting: All infrastructure is monitored on the network 24/7. Should there be an outage monitoring alerts are sent to the Public Sector operations team via e-mail and SMS.

Identity and authentication

• User authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
  • Limited access network (for example PSN)
  • Dedicated link (for example VPN)
  • Other
• Other user authentication: 2+1 factor authentication using a certificate, token and password to access the Public Sector VPN which is required to reach the vCloud Service. API is additional protected with a WAF
• Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels: Only authorised contacts are granted access rights to Public Sector cloud allowing them to connect to the secure VPN to manage their service. The Service Desk for support will only accept requests from authorised contacts. Communication with anybody at Six Degrees will need to be pre-approved by a known individual in writing. Management of the infrastructure is via dedicated connectivity and out of band of customer data and customer networks.
• Access restriction testing frequency: At least once a year
• Management access authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
  • Limited access network (for example PSN)
  • Dedicated link (for example VPN)
  • Other
• Description of management access authentication: 2+1 factor authentication using a certificate, token and password to access the Public Sector VPN which is required to reach the service, including management areas.
• 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)

Audit information for users

• Access to user activity audit information: Users have access to real-time audit information
• How long user audit data is stored for: At least 12 months
• Access to supplier activity audit information: Users contact the support team to get audit information
• How long supplier audit data is stored for: At least 12 months
• How long system logs are stored for: At least 12 months

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: Yes
• Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001: Lloyd's Register Quality Assurance (LRQA)
• ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date: 27/06/2021
• What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover: N/A
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: Yes
• Who accredited the PCI DSS certification: Convergent Network Solutions
• PCI DSS accreditation date: 01/06/2018
• What the PCI DSS doesn’t cover: Only the physical and environmental security at Six Degrees' data centres in Birmingham, London and Studley were included in this assessment. The relates to the provision of the secure physical environment for the Colocation Services with Six Degrees provides to its clients. All other services provided by Six Degrees, internal systems supporting business operations or for other clients are specifically excluded from this assessment.
• Cyber essentials: Yes
• Cyber essentials plus: Yes
• Other security certifications: Yes
• Any other security certifications:
  • ISO 9001
  • ISO 22301
  • PSN Compliance Certified
  • SOC 1 Type 2
  • SOC 2 Type 2

Security governance

• Named board-level person responsible for service security: Yes
• Security governance certified: Yes
• Security governance standards:
  • ISO/IEC 27001
  • Other
• Other security governance standards: ISO 27001:2013, Cyber Essentials, PSN
• Information security policies and processes: All ISO 27001:2013 controls and associated policies are in place. Enhanced weekly and also quarterly external approved scanning vendor (ASV) vulnerability scanning. Six Degrees also comply with our PSN CoCo which is aligned to our security principles that allows us to deliver our customers PSN Secure and Protect.; Six Degrees operate a rolling internal audit programme to ensure continuity of compliance to our various accreditations, as well as internal technical auditing of our systems through the use of various integrity checks. This is ensures that there is always a fully justified and documented Change Request for any modification of our secure systems.

Operational security

• Configuration and change management standard: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Configuration and change management approach: All non-standard changes must be pre-authorised by going through a peer, senior and CAB approval process. Standard changes are created in template form and are approved in CAB before being implement into Change controls.
• Vulnerability management type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Vulnerability management approach: Six Degrees (Public Sector) run an internal vulnerability test once a week. All reported vulnerabilities that are reported are categorised into priority depending on the severity and a case is logged with the operation team who will fix the vulnerability under the time frames dictated by Public sector patching policy. This conforms to the PCI-DSS standard.
• Protective monitoring type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Protective monitoring approach: Six Degrees (Public Sector) have a protective monitoring system where all logs are centralised and checked on a daily basis for security breaches using several key search filters. Alerts are sent out for high risk activity and are pro-actively responded to by the operations and security teams. This conforms to the PCI-DSS standard.
• Incident management type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example, CSA CCM v3.0 or ISO/IEC 27035:2011 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Incident management approach: Six Degrees operate an ITIL aligned incident management process with associated procedures for security related incidents. The process has a clearly defined governance framework, including roles & responsibilities, clear policies and associated KPIs. This process conforms to PCI DSS.

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: Supplier
• Virtualisation technologies used: VMware
• How shared infrastructure is kept separate: The Public Sector cloud is multi tenanted and is logically partitioned between its customers using virtual private networks safe guarded from each other using dedicated firewall partitions. The self-service portal only allows access to the resource that has been granted to that particular customer at login and they cannot see or control other areas.

Energy efficiency

• Energy-efficient datacentres: Yes
• Description of energy efficient datacentres: Six Degrees use the Ark datacentres in Spring Park, Corsham, and Cody Park, Farnborough, for its public sector cloud services. ARK are Participants of the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centre Energy Efficiency for SQ17, P1, and A9.; ; Through selecting Ark this demonstrates to our clients a commitment to reduce energy and make cost savings during Business As Usual. Working with Ark, clients can save more than £1.1 million and 6,000 tonnes of carbon annually based on a 1MW load, compared with an average data centre facility – lowering the Total Cost of Ownership across the Industry. Situated within secure compounds and boundaries, each Ark protects to Business Impact Level 3 (BIL3) as a minimum, without compromising availability, sustainability or price point. Ark currently has two dedicated data centre campuses spread across 74 acres in Wiltshire and Hampshire, with access to 160MVA of diverse power.

Social Value

• Fighting climate change:

  Fighting climate change

  Six Degrees has established an environmental committee that is focussed on ensuring that we apply an approach of continuous improvement to environmental compliance and good practice as we work towards the Government’s Net Zero target.; We recognise that our activities impact the environment in numerous ways, principally through: ; - Use of energy in our data centres, in buildings we occupy and during business travel and commuting.; - Disposal of hardware and other materials.; - Use of paper and disposal of general waste. ; Six Degrees as a business is committed to reducing the impact upon the environment in a number of ways. These include:; - Maintaining appropriate waste management procedures to ensure all waste is disposed of in line with legal and environmental requirements.; - Promoting the use of recycled material where possible.; - Ensuring that materials are disposed of in an environmentally safe manner at the end of their useful life.; - Promoting the efficient use of our resources.; - Promoting awareness of environmental issues.; - Offering the Cyclescheme as a benefit to all its employees to reduce the environmental impact of commuting to the office space.; - Promoting good housekeeping habits in the office space.; - Complying with all relevant environmental legislation and regulation.; Six Degrees is WEEE-certified and use third parties that are WEEE registered for disposing of electronic waste.; Our largest environmental burden is the use of power in our datacentres. We use technology designed specifically to manage power consumption. We are also very proud to have switched our data centres fully to use green and renewable energy. ; Six Degrees is in the process of evidencing its existing and ongoing work to secure certification under ISO 14001 and ISO 50001 (for Environmental and Energy Efficiency), which will further improve our reporting of environmental metrics and improvement plans.
• Covid-19 recovery:

  Covid-19 recovery

  Six Degrees’ focus has been very much on supporting the large number of people in our workplace affected by Covid-19, and protecting our workforce generally. Our activities have been outlined below.; We supported full remote working required by the government and adopted an agile working policy, benefiting our people and our clients. ; We ensured that all of our offices are fully Covid compliant throughout the pandemic in line with the prevailing Government guidance.; Regular polling of our people and including their feedback in our workplace approach, including their views on returning to the office, appropriate frequency for returns to the office, and how to cater for individuals who may still be shielding or otherwise unwilling to return to previous ways of working.; As the situation evolved, ensuring that the learnings from previous stages of the pandemic had been taken into full account – for example, even though many workplaces removed social distancing from workspaces following the vaccination programme, in consultation with our people we maintained this arrangement.; We have sustained our focus on the heightened risk of mental health concerns from home working and the somewhat extraordinary circumstances overall – we provide on a regular basis information resources, including offering up webinars, physical activities for those who want/need more social support, access to our trained Mental Health First Aiders and a range of other practical support.; We have also reviewed and updated our suite of family friendly policies to make it easier for our teams to take time out if they, or a member of their family, is affected by Covid, to help them manage their health and/or their home responsibilities as well as their work.
• Tackling economic inequality:

  Tackling economic inequality

  Six Degrees supports this theme by working with local communities to providing mentoring and job opportunities. We take pride in employing local people and offering new opportunities as they arise. We operate a Graduate scheme, offering new graduates the chance to learn and grow within the IT industry and we offer apprenticeships that can provide new skills to those looking to enter the IT managed services field. ; Our Talent Acquisition team is building richer and deeper contacts within the local community in order to raise aspirations of people from all backgrounds to work within the technology sector and to remove barriers to entry, for example through behavioural interviewing with objective behaviours that actively seek to remove bias (unconscious or otherwise) in recruitment and individual development discussions. ; In addition, we are also engaged with the Government’s Kick Start programme to offer local 16-24 year olds and a taster of tech career pathways; this will support the employment of young people in the wake of the pandemic. ; In our Future Frontiers programme, Six Degrees staff will mentor young people in a local London school. We intend to continue this relationship and work closely with the school to support with general IT needs, encourage work experience and IT career paths.
• Equal opportunity:

  Equal opportunity

  At Six Degrees we believe in harnessing a truly diverse and inclusive culture.; Our goal is to create a culture where different perspectives and experiences are valued, diversity of thought is encouraged, and there is fairness and equality of opportunity for all.; As part of our commitment to D&I, we have established an employee network, known as the 360 Degrees Group. This group raise awareness of initiatives across the business and create an annual diversity calendar highlighting certain events or celebrations throughout the year. ; In addition, we have established our MAPC (Minority Awareness and Progression Community) employee group. This group provides an opportunity for diverse individuals from a BAME background to meet with other colleagues and create a space to discuss initiatives that could help to drive greater equality in our business.; Furthermore, Six Degrees has been working hard on closing the gender gap in our company. We continue to proactively seek to address it through a wide range of activities and initiatives. These include working to ‘degender’ our recruitment adverts, ensure all of our recruiting employees are fully trained in conscious and unconscious bias avoidance.; We have introduced several strategies to bring new females into the organisation. These include our engagement with schools, colleges and universities to raise the aspirations of females toward tech. Six Degrees is an advocate of women in technology and were a leading sponsor of the 2019 Women in Technology event.; We are an active member of the Employers Network for Equality and Inclusion (ENEI) and have worked with ENEI and other organisations to provide training and workshops to all of our senior leaders on conscious inclusion as well as how to manage multi-cultural teams. We are delighted to have been awarded a Bronze Standard Award by the ENEI for our ED&I initiatives thus far.
• Wellbeing:

  Wellbeing

  Supporting our workforce’s health and wellbeing is crucial to Six Degrees. We have established an employee network, known as the 360 Degrees Group, which is made up of people who are passionate about making a difference from across all different business units, with an Executive-level sponsor and SLT-level sponsors for each sub-group or initiative. The initiatives include: ; - Including Everyone, Everywhere: Our forum which focuses on diversity and inclusion: it’s about creating a Six Degrees where everyone feels able to bring their truest self to work.; - Healthy Minds, Healthy Lives: Our forum for mental health and general wellbeing. A healthy mind and body is at the core of being happy and productive at work and at home.; - For The Benefit of Others: There’s something that touches, motivates or inspires all of us; this is a forum which focuses on charity fundraising, on making a positive mark on the communities which Six Degrees touches, and on making this a greener place to work.; We operate a well-being calendar led by Healthy Minds, Healthy Lives and also have certified Mental Health First Aiders across the business, demonstrating our commitment to providing our workforce with wellbeing support. ; We have a significant focus on building awareness and promoting dialogue around health and wellbeing: our Women in Tech committee talks about female health, and for June (Men’s Health Awareness Month) they will be promoting awareness of men’s health, for example testicular and prostate cancers.; Under the 3rd initiative we actively encourage community engagement through numerous social value activities. These include collaborative and individual fundraising projects for our partnership with Macmillan as well as promoting events within communities. In 2019 we sponsored the Women in IT awards and have also sponsored a Tough Mudder charity event.

Pricing

• Price: £0.01 a virtual machine an hour
• Discount for educational organisations: Yes
• Free trial available: Yes
• Description of free trial: The free trial version of the Public Sector IaaS is the same as the standard production version. Resource limits and timeframe will be agreed on a case basis.
• Link to free trial: N/A - please contact Six Degrees for a free trial

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 Publicsector.sales@6dg.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.