Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with the Bechtle Public Sector Sales team to talk about all things Azure - specifically, how Azure in all it’s wonderfulness can support Public Sector customers and their workloads.

Now, this was only supposed to be a quick discussion, mind you, but I did something I hadn’t done in a while: massively underestimate how long something was going to take! Half an hour in and I’m pretty sure the sales team were looking for the ‘auto-scale down’ button on me.
 

But how could I not go on?


Security was the big one to start with and honestly, it’s the bit everyone zeroes in on the moment you mention anything Public Sector, which is fair enough because it really can be the most impactful. But when I say security, I’m not just talking about the usual suspects like firewalls or encryption in transit. I mean the whole end-to-end package: where and how your data is stored, who gets to peek at it, how keys are handled, how incidents are contained.

Take Customer Lockbox for example, what a nifty way to keep data under a literal lock and key and tick every compliance box at the same time. And let’s be real, I can’t write this blog without name-dropping Confidential Computing the ultimate lock-in for data in use and a compliance dream team. Add to that Azure’s long list of UK Public Sector credentials—G-Cloud, Cyber Essentials Plus, ISO 27001/27701—and you’ve got security that isn’t just strong but actually properly certified.

From there the conversation flowed naturally into Data Sovereignty & Trust which I think can sometimes be one of the biggest sticking points. People want to know where their data lives, who’s having a nose at it and what do all these laws mean? It’s all well and good me saying ‘your data is safe’ but that’s not powerful or representative enough. You choose where it sits, what region you deploy it into (Azure has established datacentres in UK South/ UK West to support UK data residency and redundancy) and you decide under what jurisdiction any access is granted.

I once got told and it’s stuck with me ever since that for Public Sector, Sovereignty isn’t just a checkbox for an RFI or a Proposal. Trust is very much at the core of everything and it’s quite handy in that case that this is all baked into Azure’s architecture.

The bit I love chatting through the most however is that standard Azure architecture story, which is strong on its own! But, when you layer on the sector-specific goodness such as the NHS & Health Cloud Blueprints or Secure Enclaves for Defence (the list does truly go on!), it just feels that much richer and more, well, fruitful.

I’d be cirrus-ly in trouble if I didn’t talk sustainability (Sarah, who runs this blog told me I had to make puns—so I am sorry) but I have truly enjoyed watching everyone develop their own sustainability goals and Net Zero commitments over the last few years. To me it feels like it’s gone from a ‘yes we are recycling’ to people truly making cultural changes within their companies to meet these targets. Azure (+ Bechtle!) are no different—definitely go and have a read of what everyone has published on these (if you’ve made it this far into the blog you might as well!)

The pivotal moment for me however was the launch of Microsoft’s Emissions Dashboard the ability to track emissions associated with your Azure usage and actually see it modelled for you. It makes it all that much realer and more poignant.

Obviously, we had to discuss cost! It’s all well and lovely talking about the fantastic things we can do, but things cost money. It was great to share with the team that Bechtle runs free Azure Health Checks specifically for our Public Sector customers shining a light on Financial Optimisation (FinOps) best practices and spotting cost-optimisation opportunities hiding across the estate. Because honestly, who doesn’t love uncovering clever ways to save money and stretch their cloud budget further?

I want to thank you all for taking a moment to read this far into this blog, and to the awesome team we have here at Bechtle for supporting me on this.

TL;DR: Azure is really cool for Public Sector, and if you’d like to look into ways to save money on your Azure estate, please do get in touch!

 

P.S. we also have a bunch of other cool Cloud services here.

Azure for Public Sector graphic