Building a Future-Ready Financial Services Cloud: Novuna’s Azure Adoption

When Novuna needed to exit their data centre and accelerate their Azure adoption by transitioning applications to the public cloud, they partnered with Transparity for expert guidance and delivery. Transparity assessed Novuna’s Azure readiness, advised on Microsoft Azure as the ideal platform, and led a seamless migration that prioritised compliance, cost control, and security. Together, they established robust Azure governance and updated Novuna’s Landing Zone, empowering internal teams while maintaining oversight. Through close collaboration, technical expertise, and phased delivery, Transparity enhanced Novuna’s cloud environment with industry best practices and resilient architecture—setting a strong foundation for future transformation and success.

Novuna enlisted Transparity to assist in transitioning a number of applications from their data centre to the public cloud. Transparity began by assessing Novuna’s Azure platform readiness, before guiding them through the migration, delivering the project on time and within budget.

Azure adoption within scope

In budget

Meeting all objectives!

Collaborating with Transparity was a seamless experience, thanks to their exceptional flexibility and responsiveness to our evolving needs. Their deep knowledge of Azure and willingness to answer all our questions greatly supported our Azure Adoption journey and set us on the right path. Transparity’s approachable and easy-going nature made collaboration effortless, while their excellent project management consistently ensured our goals were met with high satisfaction. Ultimately, our Azure Adoption project was successfully delivered within scope and budget, meeting all its objectives.

Kim Oldham
Head of Portfolio and Digital Transformation, Novuna

The challenge

Needing to exit their data centre and move to the public cloud, Novuna sought support to select the right platform to meet their requirements. Transparity, in collaboration with Microsoft, advised Novuna on the merits of Microsoft Azure as the right platform, before guiding them through the pre-planning steps ahead of moving into the delivery phases.

The initial Azure consulting engagement was designed to build Novuna’s confidence in the process and outlined further phased migrations to Microsoft Azure. It was important to Novuna to maintain platform and resource governance to ensure compliance, cost control, and secure configurations.

Novuna chose to partner with Transparity because they were able to provide a high-level of technical knowledge, as well as experienced Microsoft accredited consultants and support capabilities.

The Solution

Transparity conducted a detailed scoping and design task to tailor the Azure platform to Novuna’s needs. This included establishing an Azure governance framework that was able to police their platform usage to ensure regulatory compliance, cost management, tagging, security and adherence to naming conventions. Transparity also reviewed and updated Novuna’s existing Landing Zone, preparing it for future applications and services. Once agreed the platform was suitable, a migration of further services into Azure would then take place in future phases.

A key component was creating a catalogue of acceptable service designs, empowering internal teams with the autonomy to build applications within Azure while considering security, scalability, backup, performance efficiency, and cost management.

Transparity worked with Novuna to establish an Azure Governance Framework based on the Cloud Adoption Framework. They performed a deep-dive analysis of Novuna’s existing Azure Landing Zone architecture, designing and deploying an updated architecture.

Once these changes were implemented and approved by Novuna’s internal teams, the first build of a Zscaler service was redesigned and deployed within key design principles and security guardrails. Novuna led the configuration and deployment process of building the Zscaler appliance within Azure.

The Outcome

This project was a true collaboration, with Transparity working closely with Novuna at every stage to ensure requirements were met and each phase was signed off before proceeding. Transparity provided an Azure Architect to lead project activities and share knowledge with Novuna’s IT teams.

Throughout the collaboration, Transparity enhanced Novuna’s cloud environment, aligning it with industry best practices, security standards, and Novuna’s unique requirements. The project successfully improved Novuna’s Azure landing zone, advancing their cloud journey.

The enhancements made by Transparity reinforced the resilience, scalability, and security of Novuna’s Azure landing zone, laying a strong foundation for future success and propelling Novuna to new heights.

About Novuna

Novuna is one of the UK’s most trusted financial services companies, with four decades of experience providing consumers, small to medium enterprises (SMEs) as well as corporate multinationals with innovative financial solutions and outstanding customer experiences.