Project Overview
Save the Children UK was held back by an ageing, inflexible legacy data centre and a complex disaster recovery setup that could take up to 48 hours to fail over. By partnering with Transparity for a phased, “room-by-room” Azure data centre migration, they replaced rigid up-front capital expenditure with a scalable, cloud-native operational model. The result is a resilient, cost and resource optimised platform with disaster recovery times slashed from days to hours, empowering their teams to stop firefighting, reduce admin overheard and focus on their vital mission: helping children to thrive. By reducing operational risk and increasing resilience, the platform provides a stronger foundation for the digital services colleagues to rely on to support children, families and supporters.
The Challenge
Save the Children UK has a clear, powerful vision: a world where every child can thrive, be heard, and be valued. To deliver this kind of rapid, life-saving impact, technology can’t just be a background function; it has to be a critical enabler. Steven Silverman, Director of Digital, Data, and Technology (DDaT) at Save the Children UK, recognised that fulfilling this mission required a resilient, modern IT foundation capable of scaling at a moment’s notice.
While the charity’s legacy data centre wasn’t technically broken, it was holding them back.
Working within physical infrastructure meant that making changes or scaling up was painfully slow. The organisation was locked into rigid capital expenditure (CAPEX) cycles and had to navigate cumbersome change control processes just to adjust their setup.
Their disaster recovery (DR) capability was a significant concern. The secondary site wasn’t an exact replica of production. Failing over was an all-or-nothing, highly manual process that required multiple people and could take up to 48 hours to complete.
Day-to-day operations were equally stressful. The ageing infrastructure was approaching end-of-life, bringing warranty and security concerns. Environmental controls in their on-site server room were struggling. Hot summers overwhelmed the chillers, and local construction work caused power fluctuations. It wasn’t unusual for the IT team to be on-site at 3AM, hard-booting servers just to keep the lights on. They were firefighting, rather than innovating.
Every pound invested matters and must deliver maximum impact for children. As a charity, avoiding unnecessary rework and ensuring value for money were important considerations alongside the technical objectives of the programme. The partnership combined Save the Children’s operational knowledge with Transparity’s Azure expertise to build the right platform for the future.
The Solution
Replacing physical servers with more expensive physical servers wasn’t the answer. Save the Children UK wanted a transformational shift, a move to the cloud that would unlock cloud-native technologies, shift costs from CAPEX to operational expenditure (OPEX), and give them granular control over their environment.
They partnered with Transparity to design and execute a comprehensive migration to Microsoft Azure. But rather than a high-risk “big bang” lift and shift, Transparity and the charity took a phased, “room-by-room” approach. Using Microsoft’s Cloud Adoption Framework, they segmented applications based on criticality and complexity, right-sizing and re-reviewing specifications to ensure the right balance between cost and performance.
First, they tackled the disaster recovery challenge by implementing Azure Site Recovery to create an exact replica of their production environment. Next, they migrated the data centre.
Crucially, this wasn’t something done to the charity’s IT team, it was done with them. We co-created the design and implementation, ensuring the right foundations were in place while upskilling Save the Children UK’s internal teams to manage the migration and the new platform confidently. Plus, our team helped the charity navigate Microsoft Elevate funding, ensuring their investment went further. This collaborative approach ensured knowledge transfer throughout the programme, leaving Save the Children UK with the skills and confidence to operate and optimise the platform long after the migration was complete
The Impact
The move to Azure brought an immediate sense of relief for the Save the Children UK team. The days of 3AM server reboots are over. By automating manual maintenance and patching, the team is now free to focus on high-value, strategic work.
For Save the Children UK, these improvements extend beyond technology. Reliable, resilient digital services help colleagues collaborate effectively, support fundraising activities and maintain critical organisational operations. Reducing disruption, improving cost management (moving from a 7 figure CAPEX cost to OPEX monthly invoicing) and releasing capacity within the technology team all contribute to the charity’s ability to focus more of its resources on delivering impact for children. Whereas changes previously could take weeks to arrange, we could now be far more flexible as we were fully in charge of the platform.
The migration to Azure isn’t the end of the story for Save the Children UK; it is a foundational launchpad. With a robust, secure infrastructure in place, Steven and his team are already looking ahead. They are expanding their use of Microsoft Sentinel for advanced cybersecurity, leveraging Microsoft Purview for data governance, and unifying their data estate with Microsoft Fabric. By securing and democratising their data today, they are laying the groundwork for safe, impactful adoption of Generative AI tomorrow.
Benefits
Routine infrastructure tasks that previously demanded significant manual effort can now be managed more efficiently, enabling the team to spend more time improving services and supporting colleagues across the organisation. The operational improvements are striking:
Seamless Disaster Recovery
Complex all-or-nothing failovers that used to take 48 hours can now be executed at a granular level in hours and as an exact mirror of production
Cost Optimisation
Moving to a consumption-based model provided full visibility into costs. After a six-month stabilisation period, the team began rightsizing environments and leveraging reserved instances to secure long-term discounts over £10K a month, or 20% of operating cost.
Empowered Teams
The IT team is no longer constrained by legacy limits. They have democratised access to data and services, enabling the broader charity to operate with unprecedented agility.
