SIMPLEX SERVICES (UK) LIMITED

Multi Cloud Hosting Services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS)

Simplex provides a multi cloud IaaS, PaaS and SaaS capability using the public cloud offering of your choice from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure Cloud.

We map your business requirements to find the right cloud provider and right service model (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS).

Features

• IaaS and PaaS (AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Scope and Specification
• Strategy and Consulting
• Implementation and Migration
• Enterprise and Solution Architecture
• Compliance and Assurance
• Packaged Services including software licenses for as-a-service requirements
• Outcome based model covering cloud , software, subscriptions and services
• SaaS (Office 365, Microsoft 365, Citrix and others)
• Containers, Dockers and other DevOps capabilities

Benefits

• Help chose right public cloud (AWS, Azure,GCP)
• Vendor agnostic
• Enhanced credibility for existing strategy
• Address business needs, maintain quality of outputs and control
• Tangible outputs conforming to technology framework
• Diverse skillsets and scalable (up and down) model
• Outcome based model
• End-to-end ownership of the service provider
• Cost effective
• Value based services

£1 an instance a day

• Education pricing available
• Free trial available

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  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 mohit@simplex-services.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 14

Service ID

877588579995319

Contact

Mohit Bajaj
+447946789222
mohit@simplex-services.com

Service scope

• Service constraints: We have no specific constraints apart from standard ones imposed by public cloud providers. They vary from customer to customer and cloud providers and can be complex to understand. We provide services to our clients to help them make the right choices and highlight any of the providers constraints.
• System requirements:
  • Bring your own License, where allowed by Public Cloud Provider
  • Support Enterprise License Agreement, where allowed by Public Cloud Provider
  • License Mobility, where allowed by Public Cloud Provider

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Yes, at extra cost
• Support response times: The response times are agreed as per customer's requirements and budgets. We broadly classify our support into three categories: Standard, Important and Critical. ; ; Standard:; General guidance cases < 24 business hours; system impaired cases < 12 business hours.; ; Important: ; General guidance cases < 24 hours; system impaired cases < 12 hours; production system impaired cases < 4 hours; production system down cases; < 1 hour.; ; Critical:; General guidance cases < 24 hours; system impaired cases < 12 hours; production system impaired cases < 4 hours; production system down cases < 1 hour; business-critical system down cases < 15 minutes
• 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: Yes, at an extra cost
• Web chat support availability: 24 hours, 7 days a week
• Web chat support accessibility standard: WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
• Web chat accessibility testing: We have not directly done web interface testing for assistive technology users but can work and channelise with partners to bring those testing experience for our clients.
• Onsite support: Yes, at extra cost
• Support levels: We provide support for various cloud services and are agnostic of cloud providers ( AWS, Azure Cloud). We offer 9am to 5pm or 24/7 support dependent on client needs and can be a combination of on-site and remote support. We have a team of consultants and specialists who are certified in the specific technology and cloud services area. We provide the 1st line and 2nd line support using our in house resources and we leverage on our relationship with the cloud service providers for any 3rd line support. ; ; We support three levels titled: Standard, Important and Critical. We work with clients to understand their business requirements and cost implications and then align workloads to support levels. We have Technical Account Manager and Cloud Specialist to help our clients define these support levels and ensure right fit throughout the contract. This activity is carried during the initial setup and can be altered if our client's requirement changes to provide flexibility.
• Support available to third parties: Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

• Getting started: We provide a comprehensive package which is customised to meet client’s requirements for onboarding the cloud services. Since every client is at a different level of cloud adoption maturity level, our approach is modularised and includes comprehensive documentation (in multiple formats), introductory videos, combination of onsite and remote training covering how-to’s, hands-on labs, online and in-person training, right-first-time modules and access to a large ecosystem of partners.
• Service documentation: Yes
• Documentation formats:
  • HTML
  • PDF
• End-of-contract data extraction: Data may be copied out using OS-level tools (such as xopy or rsync) and is available on request and per contractual agreement. Also, in most cases there is support for third party tools and we work with customers to understand their data type, timelines and cost to support such tools.
• End-of-contract process: The exit clause varies for every individual contract and so are the associated costs. We will jointly agree to explicitly call out all inclusions and exclusions possible in the remit of services contracted.; ; "Buyer may terminate the relationship with Supplier for any reason by (i) providing Supplier with notice and (ii) closing Buyers account for all services for which Supplier provide an account closing mechanism. ; ; Buyers pay for the services they use to the point of account termination. ; ; Supplier customers retain control and ownership of their data. Supplier will not erase customer data for 30 days following an account termination. This allows customers to retrieve content from Supplier services so long as the customer has paid any charges for any post-termination use of the service offerings and all other amounts due.

Using the service

• Web browser interface: Yes
• Using the web interface: Almost all functionality for each of our services is exposed through the web console. ; ; The web console facilitates management for all aspects of the Azure and AWS account (or other providers) in a consolidated view whilst providing access to all services and their respective functionalities. ; ; In some cases, specific configuration parameters of a service are dedicated to, and only available from, the CLI, SDK, or API interface.
• Web interface accessibility standard: WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
• Web interface accessibility testing: We have not directly done web interface testing for assistive technology users but can work and channelise with partners to bring those testing experience for our clients.
• API: Yes
• What users can and can't do using the API: All our public cloud solution offerings support publishing API for internal and external customers, which can be extended to our clients so that the overall stack integrates with their IT ecosystem. The API supports open system as well and users can develop, integrate, automate and maintain API gateways in a secured manner for their applications to access data, business logic, or functionality from your back-end IaaS services.; ; We provide real life examples and expertise to our clients to use Azure API Management and Amazon API Gateway so that they can deploy and scale their workload in a consistent manner.; ; There are no restrictions per se apart from technology limitations between client and public cloud setup, but since most platforms support open system and support REST API, PowerShell and Git we are fairly confident of overcoming any limitations using our combined knowledge and expertise.
• API automation tools:
  • Ansible
  • Chef
  • OpenStack
  • SaltStack
  • Terraform
  • Puppet
• API documentation: Yes
• API documentation formats:
  • HTML
  • PDF
  • Other
• Command line interface: Yes
• Command line interface compatibility:
  • Linux or Unix
  • Windows
  • MacOS
• Using the command line interface: The users can manage and administer public cloud resources from the command line. They can further automate their tasks using scripts, shell programmes and commands across multiple services.

Scaling

• Scaling available: Yes
• Scaling type:
  • Automatic
  • Manual
• Independence of resources: Customer environments are logically segregated to prevent users and customers from accessing resources not assigned to them.; ; Services which provide virtualised operational environments to customers ensure that customers are segregated via security management processes/controls at the network and hypervisor level.; ; We continuously monitor service usage to project infrastructure needs to support availability commitments/requirements. We maintain a capacity planning model to assess infrastructure usage and demands at least monthly, and usually more frequently. In addition, our capacity planning model supports the planning of future demands to acquire and implement additional resources based upon current resources and forecasted requirements.
• Usage notifications: Yes
• Usage reporting:
  • API
  • Email
  • Other
• Other usage reporting: Telephone

Analytics

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

Resellers

• Supplier type: Reseller providing extra support
• Organisation whose services are being resold: Microsoft Azure, AWS, Citrix, IBM/RedHat

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Other security clearance
• 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)
• User control over data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Datacentre security standards: Supplier-defined controls
• Penetration testing frequency: At least once a year
• Penetration testing approach: Another external penetration testing organisation
• Protecting data at rest:
  • Physical access control, complying with CSA CCM v3.0
  • Physical access control, complying with SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
  • Physical access control, complying with another standard
  • Other
• Other data at rest protection approach: AWS and Azure adheres to independently validated privacy, data protection, security protections and control processes. ; ; AWS and Azure are responsible for the security of the cloud; customers are responsible for security in the cloud. They enable customers to control their content (where it will be stored, how it will be secured in transit or at rest, how access to their environment will be managed).; ; Wherever appropriate, AWS and Azure offers customers options to add additional security layers to data at rest, via scalable and efficient encryption features. It offers flexible key management options and dedicated hardware-based cryptographic key storage.
• Data sanitisation process: Yes
• Data sanitisation type:
  • Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
  • 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:
  • Files
  • Virtual Machines
  • Database
  • Machine Image
  • Operating System
• Backup controls: User can control the backup target and environment either manually or scheduled via API call and/or script, depending upon their application and service requirements. This is also linked to their cost, criticality and backup policy.
• Datacentre setup:
  • Multiple datacentres with disaster recovery
  • Multiple datacentres
  • Single datacentre with multiple copies
  • Single datacentre
• 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
  • Bonded fibre optic connections
  • 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)
  • Other
• Other protection within supplier network: Customer environments are logically segregated to prevent users and customers from accessing resources not assigned to them. AWS and Azure gives customers ownership and control over their content by design through simple, but powerful tools that allow customers to determine how their content will be secured in transit.; ; AWS and Azure enables customers to open a secure, encrypted channel to their services using TLS/SSL, and/or IPsec or TLS VPN (if applicable), or other means of protection the customer wish to use.; API calls can be encrypted with TLS/SSL to maintain confidentiality; the Console connection is encrypted with TLS.

Availability and resilience

• Guaranteed availability: AWS,GCP and Azure currently provides SLAs for several services. Due to the rapidly evolving nature of their product offerings, SLAs are best reviewed directly on our website via the link below: https://aws.amazon.com/legal/service-level-agreements/ and https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/support/legal/sla/summary/
• Approach to resilience: The AWS and Azure Business Continuity plan details the process that they follow in the case of an outage, from detection to deactivation. For e.g. AWS has developed a three-phased approach: Activation and Notification Phase, Recovery Phase, and Reconstitution Phase. This approach ensures that AWS performs system recovery and reconstitution efforts in a methodical sequence, maximising the effectiveness of the recovery and reconstitution efforts and minimising system outage time due to errors and omissions. ; ; Both maintain a ubiquitous security control environment across all regions. Each data centre is built to physical, environmental, and security standards in an active-active configuration, employing an n+1 redundancy model, ensuring system availability in the event of component failure. Components (N) have at least one independent backup component. All data centres are online and serving traffic. In case of failure, there is sufficient capacity to enable traffic to be load-balanced to the remaining sites. ; ; Customers are responsible for implementing contingency planning, training and testing for their systems hosted. AWS and Azure provides customers with the capability to implement a robust continuity plan, including the utilisation of frequent server instance back-ups, data redundancy replication, and the flexibility to place instances and store data within multiple geographic regions.
• Outage reporting: A combination of Public dashboard; personalised dashboard with API and events; configurable alerting (email / SMS / messaging), 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: AWS’s Identity and Access Management (IAM) system controls access to AWS services/resources. No actions are permissible without authentication. IAM facilitates the issuance of access permissions per user/group. MFA is available at no extra cost.; ; AWS CoudTrail allows you to log, continuously monitor and retain events related to API calls across your AWS infrastructure.; ; We also have provision to use Azure Identity and Access Management.
• Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels: IAM provides user access control to services, APIs and specific resources. Other controls include time, originating IP address, SSL use, and whether users authenticated via MFA devices. ; ; API calls to launch/terminate instances, change firewalls, and perform other functions are signed by customers’ Secret Access Key (either the root AWS/Azure Account’s Secret Access Key or the Secret Access key of a user created with AWS/Azure IAM). The API calls cannot be made on customers’ behalf without access to customers’ Secret Access Key. ; ; API calls can be encrypted with TLS/SSL for confidentiality and customers can use TLS/SSL-protected API endpoints.
• 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)
  • Dedicated link (for example VPN)
  • Username or password
• Devices users manage the service through:
  • Dedicated device on a segregated network (providers own provision)
  • Dedicated device over multiple services or networks
  • 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 have access to real-time audit information
• How long user audit data is stored for: User-defined
• Access to supplier activity audit information: You control when users can access 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: INTERNATIONAL REGISTER OF QUALITY ASSESSED ORGANISATIONS
• ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date: 24/02/2024
• What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover: NA
• 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: Yes
• Security governance certified: Yes
• Security governance standards: Other
• Other security governance standards: As a company we are Cyber Essentials.; ; Azure and AWS have Cyber Essentials Plus; ISO 27017; ISO 27018; SOC 1/2/3. Microsoft is ISO 27001 certified.
• Information security policies and processes: We implement formal, documented policies and procedures that provide guidance for operations and information security within the organisation. Policies address purpose, scope, roles, responsibilities and management commitment. ; ; Employees maintain policies in a centralised and accessible location. The management is responsible for familiarising employees with our security policies. ; ; We have established information security functions that are aligned with defined structure, reporting lines, and responsibilities. Leadership involvement provides clear direction and visible support for security initiatives. ; ; The output of the Leadership reviews include any decisions or actions related to:; ; • Improvement of the effectiveness of the ISMS. ; • Update of the risk assessment and treatment plan.; • Modification of procedures and controls that affect information security to respond to internal or external events that may impact the ISMS. ; • Resource needs. ; • Improvement in how the effectiveness of controls is measured. ; ; Policies are approved by the leadership at least annually or following a significant change to the environment.

Operational security

• Configuration and change management standard: Supplier-defined controls
• Configuration and change management approach: Changes to customer services and features follow secure software development practices, including security risk reviews prior to launch. Developer access to production environments is via explicit access system requests, subject to owner review and authorisation. ; ; Teams set bespoke change management standards per service, underpinned by standard guidelines.; ; All production environment changes are reviewed, tested and approved. Stages include design, documentation, implementation (including rollback procedures), testing (non-production environment), peer to peer review (business impact/technical rigour/code), final approval by authorised party.; ; Emergency changes follow incident response procedures. Exceptions to change management processes are documented and escalated to the management.
• Vulnerability management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Vulnerability management approach: AWS and Azure Security performs vulnerability scans on the host operating system, web applications, and databases. Approved 3rd party vendors conduct external assessments (minimum frequency: quarterly). Identified vulnerabilities are monitored and evaluated. Countermeasures are designed and implemented to neutralise known/newly identified vulnerabilities.; ; We monitor newsfeeds/vendor sites for patches and receive customer intelligence.; ; We support our customers for all scanning, penetration testing, file integrity monitoring and intrusion detection for their instances/ applications. Scans should include customer IP addresses excluding AWS and Azure endpoints, as that is part of AWSAzure and compliance vulnerability scans.
• Protective monitoring type: Supplier-defined controls
• Protective monitoring approach: We use AWS and Azure deploy (pan-environmental) monitoring devices to collect information on unauthorised intrusion attempts, usage abuse, and network/application bandwidth usage. Devices monitor:; ; • Port scanning attacks; • Usage (CPU, processes, disk utilization, swap rates, software-error generated losses); • Application metrics; • Unauthorised connection attempts; ; Near real-time alerts flag incidents, based on Service/Security Team- set thresholds.; ; Requests to the log events is through the portal. We can also integrate with other third party software applications for additional/enhanced functionalities.
• Incident management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Incident management approach: We closely follow ITIL processes and incident management process is clearly defined to ensure the service is restored to a predefined standard of service to our customers. This is achieved with the monitoring tools deployed as part of the service and is configured based on the inputs from both users as well as technology to maintain the standard of the services. Based on the severity of the incident, incident reports are followed by Root Cause Analysis to the identified stakeholders and knowledge base is update for continuous improvement and incident avoidance

Secure development

• Approach to secure software development best practice: Conforms to a recognised standard, but self-assessed

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: VMware, Hyper-V, KVM hypervisor, Xen hypervisor, AWS proprietary and others
• How shared infrastructure is kept separate: Customer environments are logically segregated, preventing users and customers from accessing unassigned resources. Customers maintain full control over their data access. Services which provide virtualised operational environments to customers, ensure that customers are segregated and prevent cross-tenant privilege escalation and information disclosure via hypervisors and instance isolation. ; ; Different instances running on the same physical machine are isolated from each other via the Xen hypervisor. The Amazon/Azure firewall resides within the hypervisor layer, between the physical network interface and the instance's virtual interface. All packets pass through this layer. The physical random-access memory (RAM) is separated using similar mechanisms.

Energy efficiency

• Energy-efficient datacentres: Yes
• Description of energy efficient datacentres: AWS and Azure are committed to running their business in the most environmentally friendly way possible. In addition to the environmental benefits inherently associated with running applications in the cloud, They have a long-term commitment to achieve 100% renewable energy usage for our global infrastructure footprint and have made a lot of progress on this commitment. ; ; Given the nature of changes being made, the latest information can be found at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/environment/energy and https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainability/

Social Value

• Social Value:

  Social Value

  • Fighting climate change
  • Covid-19 recovery
  • Tackling economic inequality
  • Equal opportunity
  • Wellbeing

  Fighting climate change

  Involved in activities like:; ; - Support Green initiatives in our projects internal and external delivered to our customers. We have Green Project Management certified PMs.; ; - Deliver additional environmental benefits in the performance of the contract including working towards net zero greenhouse gas emissions.; - Influence staff, suppliers, customers and communities through the delivery of the contract to support environmental protection and improvement.

  Covid-19 recovery

  We are involved in activities like below in the delivery of the contract and our services to customers:; - Create employment and other return to work opportunities for those left unemployed by COVID-19, particularly new opportunities in high growth sectors.; - Support organisations and businesses to manage and recover from the impacts of COVID-19, including where new ways of working are needed to deliver services including remote and hybrid working.; ; - Support the mental health of people affected by COVID-19.; - Improve workplace conditions that support the COVID-19 recovery effort including effective social distancing, remote working, and sustainable travel solutions and only travel when needed.

  Tackling economic inequality

  Involved in activities like:; - Providing internship and training opportunities to address skills gaps and giving them pathway to employment.; ; - Influence staff, suppliers, customers and communities through the delivery of the contract to support employment and skills opportunities in high growth sectors.

  Equal opportunity

  Involved and supporting activities in reduce the disability employment gap like:; ; - Influence staff, suppliers, customers and communities through the delivery of the contract to support disabled people. Our co-founder and CEO is a Governor in a college of special needs and advocates and support the students inclusion in the employment.

  Wellbeing

  Involved and supporting activities in improving health and wellbeing like:; ; - Support the health and wellbeing, including physical and mental health, in the contract workforce.; - Influence staff, suppliers, customers and communities through the delivery of the contract to support health and wellbeing, including physical and mental health.

Pricing

• Price: £1 an instance a day
• Discount for educational organisations: Yes
• Free trial available: Yes
• Description of free trial: The free trial version for cloud as per AWS and Azure terms and conditions. The key components include virtual machines, storage, backup and database. The link for latest set of free products has been provided below for reference.
• Link to free trial: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/free/ and https://aws.amazon.com/free

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  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 mohit@simplex-services.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.