Affinity Digital (Technology) Ltd

AWS Hosting, Migration, Consultancy and Support

Affinity is an experienced provider of AWS hosting, consultancy, migration and support, for critical services and applications. We have experience with a range of clients, such as Cabinet Office Digital, NCA and Education Scotland. We are accredited with ISO27001, 9001 and Cyber Essentials Plus.

Features

• 24/7/365 monitoring and callout
• Cost optimisation and planning
• Migration design, planning and execution
• Consultancy for infrastructure builds and improvements
• Jira service desk giving access to support technicians
• Security monitoring, assessments and continual improvements
• Infrastructure performance reviews and improvements
• Backup and recovery planning and implementation
• Providing support and assistance to your in-house technicians
• DevSecOps and CI/CD consultancy and improvements

Benefits

• Reduces clients' hosting costs
• Improves security across running services
• Improves availability and resilience of running services
• Prevents data loss and improves service recovery times
• Provides full support to your in-house teams
• Allows clients to focus on delivering quality services
• Allows clients to scale their infrastructure cost effectively
• Ensures that AWS migration projects are successful
• Makes available AWS services around AI and ML
• Allows clients to meet regulatory requirements such as HIPAA

£100 to £160 a unit an hour

• Education pricing 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 sales@affinity-digital.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 14

Service ID

874645428428896

Contact

Jonathan Duval
01872 321177
sales@affinity-digital.com

Planning

• Planning service: Yes
• How the planning service works: Our first step is to establish a relationship with your company and to identify the appropriate team members to be involved in the planning process. We then need to evaluate your current situation and establish what the drivers are for you looking to use our AWS cloud hosting and support services. We can then get things planned out. ; ; We help clients plan by delivering the following:; ; - A full review of existing in-scope infrastructure and workloads; - A technical design for new architecture(s); - Planning based on delivering scalability and cost optimisation; - Technical workshops to work with your in-house technicians if appropriate; - Cost estimation, covering both the projects themselves and ongoing hosting costs; - AWS organisation and account planning, including landing zone design; - Migration planning where appropriate, assessing the workloads and data to be migrated, and looking to minimise service disruption wherever possible; - Project planning, covering timelines, dependencies, risks and resourcing; - Implementation planning, including possible phased implementation options; - Planning of required penetration testing, service assessments, etc.; - Consideration of data residency requirements; - Consideration of regulatory and compliance requirements, such as GDPR, HIPAA, ISO 27001 and PCI DSS
• Planning service works with specific services: No

Training

• Training service provided: Yes
• How the training service works: Affinity’s standard on-site training (which is provided as part of the transition phase of our onboarding process if required) offers customers training for individual user groups (e.g. server admins or DevOps personnel). Affinity’s flexibility in scheduling enables our customers to choose the criteria and timing that meets their needs. It is normal practice for the support agency to implement security and version updates, although this work can be undertaken by the client if they have the appropriate roles within their organisation that we can train.; ; On-site training: ; • Our full training implementation is planned in conjunction with the client's objectives, timing requirements and go-live date. All dates are subject to the client’s approval. ; • Our training is tailored to the specific requirements of each client group and coordinated with the timing and goals of our customers. A customised training agenda is developed and delivered to the customer for review to ensure complete satisfaction. ; • Our experienced AWS trainers can cover any combination of Affinity's deliverables including but not limited to the Infrastructure-as-Code codebase, service monitoring, service updates, cost monitoring, etc.; • Training will also be provided on the use of our support tools such as Jira Service Desk
• Training is tied to specific services: Yes
• Services the training service works with: AWS

Setup and migration

• Setup or migration service available: Yes
• How the setup or migration service works: Affinity help organisations by helping them understand how they can minimise the risks and maximise the benefits of a move to AWS cloud.; ; Working in partnership with these organisations to help them through this change process, we are able to translate some of the complexity and uncertainty into deliverable results.; ; Key elements of helping clients migrate to the cloud are:; ; - The initial planning, as detailed above; - The building of infrastructure using an Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) approach, typically using Terraform or AWS CloudFormation. This gives consistency of environments, auditability, the ability to scan configurations for security best practice, rollback capabilities, etc.; - The setting up of cloud provider accounts, including user access, billing, etc.; - The setting up of security services, such as AWS Security Hub, GuardDuty, Amazon Inspector, CloudTrail, etc.; - The setting up of cost monitoring, including cost allocation tagging, custom reports, budget reporting, etc.; - The migration of workloads and data if appropriate, leveraging services such as AWS Migration Hub, AWS Database Migration Service.; - The setting up of infrastructure and application deployment pipelines, using tools such as GitHub Actions, AWS CodePipeline; - The setting up of incident response and DR plans
• Setup or migration service is for specific cloud services: Yes
• List of supported services: Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Quality assurance and performance testing

• Quality assurance and performance testing service: Yes
• How the quality assurance and performance testing works: - Load testing: For many clients we run loading testing using the AWS distributed load testing solution which we host on our own AWS account, in combination with jMeter scripts. We can generate significant and complex loads with this. In addition to the reporting from the load testing solution itself, we monitor how infrastructure responds during the testing, using services such as CloudWatch dashboards and metrics.; ; - Penetration testing: Independent testing can be carried out of the solution(s) we've put in place to give an objective assessment.; ; - AWS Well-Architected Tool: Following a well-architected review, this can be used to give an assessment, highlighting any risks and providing an improvement plan.; ; - AWS Resiliency Hub: This can be used to highlight any aspects of the IaC configuration which might prevent the RTO and RPO from being achieved in the event of a recovery being needed. It can also be used to test resiliency with tools such as the AWS Fault Injection Simulator.; ; - AWS Security Hub: This gives a measurable assessment of any security issues; ; - AWS Cost and Usage reports: These can demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of solutions that have been put in place.

Security testing

• Security services: No

Ongoing support

• Ongoing support service: Yes
• Types of service supported:
  • Buyer hosting or software
  • Hosting or software provided by a third-party organisation
• How the support service works: Affinity offers a flexible full-service support model that covers all aspects of AWS hosting. Our SLAs cover admin support, service maintenance, enhancements and a comprehensive support logging tool set.; ; Availability Monitoring: Sites and workloads are monitored with tools such as New Relic Synthetics and these are hooked into OpsGenie to ensure that technicians can be called out as part of 24x7x365 cover.; ; Cost monitoring: We monitor costs through tools such as AWS Cost Explorer and set up budget alerts so that we can get a heads-up if it's looking as though budgets might be breached.; ; Service Desk: We provide a service allowing clients to submit requests and P1 tickets can be set up so as to call out technicians if necessary.; ; Security Monitoring: As well as responding to any security alerts we also review security reporting to improve security wherever possible.; ; Service Updates: Cloud providers are constantly updating their services, so we ensure that infrastructure and services stay up to date.; ; Enhancements and Improvements: New or changed application services may well need new infrastructure or services to be set up to support them. We can work in collaboration with developers to set up the required services.

Service scope

• Service constraints: We do not generally offer on-premise support, other than pre-planned retrospectives and/or planning sessions. However, on-site support can be arranged based on planned short-term engagements, and will be subject to a subsistence charge - £135 per day (subject to client's location)

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: Response times are aligned to our standard or customised SLAs. Our standard PI response time is 30 mins.; ; Standard environment support is 24/7/365 and application 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday.
• 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: 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
• Web chat support: No
• Support levels: We supply one comprehensive level of support for our clients. ; This is charged at £100 per hr. With a minimum support contract starting at 7.5 hrs per month.; We can supply a variety of add on services should they be required. eg. Extended hrs or UX design and development work packages.; We will supply a technical account manager as part of the on-boarding service. The technical account manager will also be available for consultation at any time during the lifetime of our agreement. Note: Their time will be charged for under the agreed SLA.

Resellers

• Supplier type: Not a reseller

Staff security

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

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: Yes
• Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001: BRITISH ASSESSMENT BUREAU LTD
• ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date: 18/8/2015
• What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover: There is nothing outside of scope.
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: No
• Cyber essentials: Yes
• Cyber essentials plus: Yes
• Other security certifications: No

Social Value

• Social Value:

  Social Value

  • Fighting climate change
  • Tackling economic inequality
  • Equal opportunity
  • Wellbeing

  Fighting climate change

  There are two words that we take very seriously when it comes to the climate crisis; responsibility and opportunity.; ; Evan as a small business in the service IT sector we recognise the efforts and responsibility we still have and to that end we have already adopted a fully remote workforce and an intent from all our colleagues to ensure we find the most environmentally friendly way to travel (when we have to) based on the number of people travelling and the destination.; Even as a small business in the IT service sector, we recognise the responsibility we have in considering our potential impact on climate change. Our carbon footprint has significantly reduced over the last 4 years. We have now adopted a fully remote workforce, removing the daily commute. When we have to travel, we consider the most environmentally-friendly way to travel, based on the number of people travelling and the destination. In our supplier evaluation procedure, we ask the right questions of our potential suppliers and make purchasing decisions based on a common culture and approach. We believe that the more times an organisation gets asked about its responsibility to climate change, the higher it will climb on their agenda. Decommissioned kit is safely donated to charitable and worthy causes or through green disposal and recycling schemes. But we know there is more we can do. Within our 5-year plan we are exploring what options we may have for carbon offsetting and for offering green employee perks and incentives, and also whether becoming B-Corp certified is right for Affinity.

  Tackling economic inequality

  The matter of economic inequality is particularly relevant to us as a Cornish company. Cornwall has high levels of deprivation and has a low-wage, seasonal economy. Wages are around 80 per cent of the national average (https://www.local.gov.uk/case-studies/responding-cost-living-challenges-cornwall-council). Affinity is helping to address the economic inequality of our region through the creation of skills-based, non-seasonal jobs in Cornwall: although our workforce is distributed across the UK, 73% of our PAYE staff base is employed from within the region. We are also supporting regional economic growth through the attraction of inward investment to the region from our national client base. Affinity strongly believes in paying a fair wage to all of our colleagues, at all levels, including any contract staff we may use from time to time. This commitment is reflected in our accreditation as a Living Wage Employer - https://www.livingwage.org.uk/accredited-living-wage-employers.

  Equal opportunity

  We consciously ensure that the needs of all individuals at Affinity are catered for, starting with their first engagement with us at the recruitment stage and then throughout their employment here. Being a fully remote workforce means that colleagues are able to work from home or any location that suits their needs. We offer complete choice and flexibility when providing equipment to enable them to do their best work, comfortably and safely, based on their individual needs. We support flexible working patterns, which allows people to fit their work around family, care, religious or health commitments or challenges. Above all, we recognise the benefits of diversity and inclusion. Our colleagues include several employees approaching and beyond the statutory age of retirement (current age range is 24-69), colleagues from multiple ethnic origins and religious groups, and a growing number of female colleagues - including c-suite executives - in an industry sector that has been traditionally male dominated. Of additional relevance is our Investors In People accreditation. By measuring ourselves against the values of the We Invest In People framework (https://www.investorsinpeople.com/accreditations/we-invest-in-people/), we can be confident in our provision of fair, equal and progressive opportunities for all staff and colleagues.

  Wellbeing

  Affinity is only as good as the people in it. We are firmly in the service sector and place significant value on our colleagues. This includes taking responsibility for supporting them in building healthy habits, for fostering a culture which supports their mental and physical wellbeing, and for providing an environment in which everyone can thrive. We are proud of our Investors In People accreditation. By building the values of the We Invest In People framework (https://www.investorsinpeople.com/accreditations/we-invest-in-people/) into our daily operations, and measuring ourselves against these values, we can be confident that employee connection, psychological safety and wellbeing are all a central part of our organisational culture. We have a qualified therapist, coach and counsellor on our team who works with our leadership team to support us in delivering positive leadership. He also works across the whole company to encourage strong, positive relationships, and a healthy and supportive culture, through regular staff training and events. And he is available to all staff, for times when they need one-to-one support in dealing with mental health and wellbeing. But we think there is more we can do. Within our annual plan, we are considering the introduction of new measures to bring wellbeing even higher up our agenda. This includes exploring: wellbeing incentives for our staff, rewarding them for healthy habits, incorporation of the Employee Wellbeing module within our BambooHR system (https://www.bamboohr.com/hr-software/employee-wellbeing) so that our support of staff mental and physical wellbeing is assessed as part of our HR processes, expanding on our existing We Invest In People accreditation, with the additional We Invest In Wellbeing accreditation (https://www.investorsinpeople.com/accreditations/we-invest-in-wellbeing/) the appointment and training of a mental health first aider.

Pricing

• Price: £100 to £160 a unit an hour
• Discount for educational organisations: Yes

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 sales@affinity-digital.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.