Benefits & Results

Significant cost savings in data storage and software licensing.
Strengthened data privacy and security compliance.
Established a solid foundation for generating crucial insights that support strategic decision-making within Sky business functions.

Savings of 24% on the overall cost of implementing the strategic data archival solution on Azure Cloud.
Substantial savings in one-off software license cost and annual cost of ownership.
Functional and technical accelerators built on the Azure data archival platform optimized the overall project timeline by 40%, giving stabilization period to business users before decommissioning legacy applications.

Background

Sky UK Limited, a British broadcaster and telecommunications company, provides television, broadband internet, and fixed-line and mobile telephone services to consumers and businesses in the United Kingdom. As a subsidiary of Sky Group and part of Comcast since 2018, Sky continuously seeks to enhance its operational efficiency and maintain its competitive edge.

Challenges

Issue Identification: Sky faced several obstacles due to increasing data volumes stored inefficiently across various systems and applications, leading to increased total ownership costs and inefficient data management. The existence of multiple data sources caused data inconsistencies and redundancies, making it difficult for the organization to manage, store, and analyze data effectively. Additionally, the need to decommission legacy applications necessitated an efficient archival solution for all historical data before their scheduled termination.

Issue Impact: The challenges led to high software licensing fees and total cost of ownership. There was also a risk of potential non-compliance with data privacy and security regulations. Furthermore, the perceived costs associated with implementing a cloud data archival solution were considered high. Overall, these issues impeded Sky's strategic vision, making it crucial to implement a comprehensive data archival solution.

Solution

NowVertical provided a comprehensive Strategic Data Archival Solution tailored to Sky's needs. The solution involved understanding existing processes, data reporting, and compliance requirements to design a scalable, flexible, and cost-effective solution aligned with Sky's key requirements and supporting their data security processes and guidelines.

Implementation

Assessed current processes to extract, encrypt, and decrypt the live data.
Designed the technical solution considering best practices around configuration, security, and optimization of Azure resources.
Built the strategic data archival solution; Ensured the solution met all compliance requirements (as per Sky's security and governance standards).
Soft-launched the solution in a production-ready environment; Conducted data reconciliation between source and migrated data.
Validated business reports.
Deployed and handed over the solution to operations.
Managed the Data Archival Platform by the internal operations data team with support from NowVertical.
Embedded standard operating procedures with upskilled operations team.