Case Study
Softcat’s Cloud Native Engineering To Support Defaqto’s Platform With Making Smarter Financial Decisions
The Challenge
As with many organisations, reviewing partnerships and how these align to your specific business needs is common place. During 2024, Defaqto simply decided it was time to evaluate the historical relationship it had with its Microsoft partner. And the result determined a change was required, based on factors such as greater partnership alignment, trust & transparency and cost reduction.
During the initial Softcat discussions, who were an existing partner for other services, it was quickly identified that Softcat had the required capabilities to match the Defaqto need for both 24x7x365 PlatformOps and SecOps – a common combined requirement for SaaS businesses.
“Our needs were somewhat simple, ensure we had the right partner for the next phase of our growth. As an existing trusted partner, Softcat were immediately on-hand to provide advice and offer solutions as to how we could proceed. And that’s exactly what we did.” James Smith, Infrastructure Manager, Defaqto.
Key facts
• 4m product features updated every day
• £42bn of investments recommended through Defaqto’s financial planning software each year
• 88% of consumers are more likely to purchase a Defaqto-rated product
The Solution
The initial discussions highlighted three clear objectives, each of which formed a workstream in the overall solution and plan:
• Azure Billing & Support Transfer; with notice served to its incumbent partner, the critical path activity was to align the billing transfer to Softcat’s Cloud Service Provider (CSP) agreement to ensure there were no gaps in support.
• Azure Platform review and onboarding into a Softcat Managed Service; in parallel to the first objective the next step was to review the current state of play, identify all areas of improvement (security, architecture, reliability, commercial) and importance, followed by remediation and onboarding into the Softcat Managed Service / PlatformOps service.
• SecOps onboarding; following in sequence to the above, was the takeover of 24x7x365 cyber SecOps leveraging the deployment of Microsoft Sentinel.
“We had some initial speed-bumps when kicking off the project, but our combined, Softcat and Defaqto team, rallied together to ensure the migration aspect was completed ready for the cutover with Softcat resource on-hand days before to support the cutover. From there the onboarding and handover was seamless and now our partnership is flourishing.” Dan Weakley, Service Delivery Manager at Softcat.
Highlights
• Integrated Azure billing with 24x7x365 Azure PlatformOps and CyberOps
• FinOps to ensure maximum optimisation and alignment of IT to business needs.
• Ongoing architectural oversight to help shape new projects (DR, Data) in line with best practice and operational efficiency.
The Benefits
The key results are:
• A highly automated and standardised Azure platform with a Softcat 24x7x365 managed service for PlatformOps and SecOps to ensure continuous and proactive governance (architecture, commercial, security and reliability) alongside centralised billing for all Azure usage.
• Aligned engineering, cyber security and architecture resources to support the future needs of Defaqto
• Integrated FinOps function to govern the cost of Azure alongside use of the Softcat Cloud Management Platform to provide end to end platform visibility.
“The end-to-end process was extremely efficient, and ultimately ensured our migration into Softcat services without any interruption to our business. We look forward to our partnership going from strength to strength” James Smith, Infrastructure Manager, Defaqto.
At a glance
• A mature partner to provide 24x7x365 Microsoft Azure PlatformOps and SecOps
• Access to Softcat market leading, cloud management tooling
• FinOps to help govern the cost of Azure against the 6x increase in usage.