Weeknotes s01e01
TL, DR: Cloud, SD WAN and Architecture.. and First Weeknote!
After pondering whether to start writing weeknotes or not for the last 6 months I finally decided to give it a go. Initially introduced to weeknotes back in 2019 when I first started following Andy Callow and others since on Medium. I have found them quite inspiring, and initially questioned whether I would have anything half as useful to want to share, but soon realised I was kind of missing the point. After sharing my thoughts with Ian Roddis that I was considering it he was very encouraging and suggested to just go for it. It gave me that final tipping point push! Read a suggested post on Weeknote Styles to get me started, most of which felt familiar as its a style used by others including Andy.
Having written the following weeknote in reflection I found that taking the timeout to reflect and write about it was a really refreshing outlet and felt a lot more focused on the week to come. So here’s my first weeknote…
Who did you talk to outside of your organisation?
At the tail end of last week I managed to broker an engaging 4 way discussion between colleagues at KGH, Phoenix, Simpsons and NHS Digital around what the KGH/NGH Group PowerBI architecture may look like with a shared NHSmail Central Tenant at its heart. Was very productive session and setup the foundations for continued dialogue on this front especially as this is relatively a new space on the central tenant. This is going to be an interesting journey as it is new territory with it being a national shared NHS tenant and the complexity it will bring with the setup and configuration. As well as having the benefit of being able to share health intelligence across the Group, we will continue to build on the N365/O365 end user experience and same/single sign on and accessibility across the Group. #SingleSignOnByDesign
Was particularly grateful to our NHSmail TA colleagues at NHS Digital (Mark Ward and Zaheer Iqbal) for their support and offer of continued support to get this off the ground. We are one of the first Trusts in England to look at deploying PowerBI Pro/Premium on the central tenant linking back to a new cloud based Data Warehouse (in our new Azure Data Centre). Exciting times ahead!
Also continued conversations this week with both Virgin Media Business and DELL/Gyrocom around providing connectivity for a new site that KGH is hoping to standup relatively quick. Having gone around the usual 60 to 90 working day lead time conversations with ISP’s over the years using LES and IPVPN network circuits it was refreshing to hear about how SD WAN technologies could transform our traditional approach to standing up new sites over an internet connection. Being able to make use of existing internet connectivity or bonded broadband services to standup new sites within days and weeks. Which is particularly interesting in our current challenged times where we have had the need to standup new remote locations quickly.
DELL/Gyrocom presented their proposal to pilot VMWare VeloCloud SDWAN solution for a new site which KGH is looking to rapidly standup. I was particularly impressed with their high level of belief in the performance capabilities of the technology with internet circuits which may be considered to have high latency and contention. They have offered us a free short term SDWAN pilot including connectivity to prove and test the technology before we commit to progress which in turn shortens the timescales in being able to make the new site ready for use. For once the WAN connectivity is ahead of the LAN setup and lead times!
If the pilot goes well it will hopefully leap us into wider discussions around SD WAN adoption and the organisation and hopefully the Group also. It could save on costly network lease lines and provide a more agile way of providing connectivity and network performance!
What would you have liked to do more of?
- I would have liked to have spent more time working with Charu our N365 PM to continue work on Office 365 dependency mapping, deployment planning and to baseline our licensing requirements ahead of our annual subscription later this year and the work we need to complete over the next the next 6 months.
- Our new Network and Telecoms Manager — Steve started this week and got off to a fast and furious start to his first week which must have felt like 5 weeks at the end of 5 days. Although we bumped into each other in various virtual project meetings and exchanged messages on Teams throughout the week we never got the chance to actually catch-up properly. Have arranged to meet next week to give him more of an overview of our current and upcoming infrastructure projects as well as some legacy info he will need to know in his new role.
Will hopefully be focusing on the above more next week.
What do you wish you could have changed?
- WVD (Windows Virtual Desktop) workshop did not go as expected and agreed to regroup next week and take the conversation a step back to basics. We needed to have spent more time on developing our Desktop Strategy. Hoping the session next week will be more of an introduction to WVD and help us reboot into conversations about undertaking a WVD POC and spark more conversations about our longer term desktop strategy aspirations.
- Spent more time to work on Telecoms and Pathology network projects with Emily (PM). Found myself running short of time this week to be able to respond to some actions that are with me.
- Clash of meetings! Sometimes 3 deep.. somehow I can’t see this changing in the near future, although getting better at being more selective about where I can add more value.
What frustrated me?
Bleeps and paging! Along with old tech you also get the problems of trying to figure out why we have some of this arcane tech in place still in 2021. Limited audit info and even less reporting capabilities. With the looming deadline of removing pagers from use by the end of 2021 across the NHS as set out by Matt Hancock in 2019, this is something we need to fast get to grips with, understand our usage and the problem we are trying to fix and not over solutionise as the solution may just be already there staring us in the face!
What did you learn?
Back in early February our plans for the cloud were flipped on their head as a result of some much welcomed funding from NHS England. Which had the effect of turning our proposed 3 year journey of discovery, adventure and gradual migration to the cloud into a warp speed bullet Train arriving in the cloud inside the next 6 months! After some initial whiplash from that jolt in speed, it’s been a fantastic focused period of learning and expansion.
The last few weeks have been a fast track learning curve for myself and some of the team. From going through what our migration approach will be from our local on prem Data Centres to Azure Cloud and figuring out what our cost model in the cloud will look like. Was great to see what some of those benefits will actually look like based on a consumption model. This is a massive step change away from our traditional method of over provisioning data centre infrastructure to cover perceived expansion, performance and data growth for the next 3 to 5 years until the hardware refresh program.
Spent most of this week with our talented Ops Team in Azure Cloud Design workshops lead by cloud specialists from Phoenix Software, our Microsoft cloud adoption partner. The team were definitely having some fun scaling back some of the over powered server specs and minimising wastage and increasing efficiency as a part of the migration design. Looking forward to reviewing the output design proposal from Phoenix post design workshops.
Also gained further understanding of how our group PowerBi architecture will hang together with our own Azure Cloud Data Centre Tenants and the Central NHSmail Tenant. The first of this kind in the NHS across a Group!
What did you enjoy?
Launch of the Group Digital Strategy, lead by Andy Callow (Group CDIO), and Digital Directors Ian Roddis (KGH) and Phil Corrin(NGH) Strategy for how we will achieve the goal of being the most Digital Hospital Group in England by July 2023. Was great to see digital colleagues from across the group in attendance.
What did you achieve?
- Following on from successful conversations with DELL/Gyrocom earlier in the week. I managed to turn this into a tangible outcome by securing agreement from the new site Task and Finish Group to progress site network connectivity by moving forward with a SD WAN pilot.
- Made good progress on week 1 of 2 Azure cloud design workshops which remain largely on track.
- PowerBi Pro licences successfully transferred to our Central NHSmail Tenant and started the process for establishing access for our Health Intelligence Team. Enables us to make a start on building the platform.
- Agreed some initial technical scoping timescales with the team for our OneDrive migration on the N365 project to get this piece of work delivered.
- Started work with N365 PM on refreshing our Kanban board to re-ignite regular project stand-ups, will continue into next week.
- Not sure this one is an achievement yet! But at the end of this week I was given senior management responsibility for the delivery of the N365 project. Looking forward to this challenge I think, with delivering some significant and large pieces of work over the next 3 to 4 months with the usual resource constraints to navigate through.
- On the group clinical collaboration front, I managed to squeeze some time in this week for providing some background to operational/patient system IT Service Leads to enable discussions around developing an IT support model to transition from project to BAU for supporting users at both KGH and NGH where reciprocal access to respective Cancer Databases have been provided over Citrix. Will hopefully continue on this in the next few weeks.
What are you looking forward to next week?
- Continuing some azure design workshops.
- Firewall scoping with Steve for our new Azure Express Routes being delivered by Virgin Media.
- Reboot of the Cyber Security Group.
- Continue building WiFi technology roadmap for KGH
- Taking a couple of days off.
Read in the last week to month or so..
- 5 Uncommon Things Great Leaders Do by Dipesh Jain
- The Total Economic Impact Of Dell EMC SD-WAN Solution Powered by VMware Cost Savings And Business Benefits
- NHS design principles
- Servant Leadership
- TOGAF is Agile! What? You Didn’t Know This?
- What I learned studying Enterprise Architecture
- How not to suck at NHS Job applications by Andy Callow
- User manual for me — 2021 refresh by Ian Roddis
Currently Reading:
- Fabric Networking — Sara Perrott
- Software-Defined WAN by VMware
- WiFi 6 by David Coleman
- An Implementation Strategy for BYOD in the NHS by Rob Blagden
- Medical Medium — Anthony William
- Gurmukh Sikhia — Bhai Sahib Vir Singh Ji — Gurmukh means “Coming from the persona of the (Sikh) Guru”, Sikhia means teaching
