Migrating critical services at the Department for Business and Trade

The challenge: Moving critical services to a new platform

In July 2022, Government Digital Service announced the closure of GOV.UK Platform as a Service (PaaS). For the Department for Business and Trade (DBT), this presented a significant challenge: migrating 41 critical digital services to a new platform without disruption. These services all play a key role in supporting trade, regulation and international business – so downtime just wasn’t an option.

The challenge wasn’t just technical. It was operational and cultural. Service teams had existing delivery priorities and limited time to get involved in platform development and migration. On top of that, the new platform was being developed in parallel with the earliest migrations. This meant that early adopters were using a product that was still work-in-progress.

The migration needed to be secure, incident-free and efficient,  all while maintaining business as usual.

Made Tech worked in close partnership with DBT’s digital teams to design and deliver a secure, flexible platform and migrated services to the new platform seamlessly.

Our approach: Planning and delivering the migration

From the beginning, we knew that making the migration process smooth and reliable was key to gaining service teams’ trust in the new platform. To do this, we:

• worked with DBT to create a clear migration plan that helped teams understand the risks, prepare their services and move over safely.
• placed migration engineers directly in service teams to offer practical support and build in-house skills. Over 90% of the team were from Made Tech.
• built automated tools to speed up migrations, cut down on manual tasks, and make the process more consistent.
• set up real-time support during cutovers, including bridge calls and incident planning, to make sure everything ran smoothly with minimal disruption.

Lawrence Goldstien, Lead Engineer at Made Tech explained this in more detail.

“We began by migrating internal tools to reduce risk and safeguard public-facing services. Every migration was an opportunity to refine our approach for subsequent services. By iterating and learning throughout, we scaled up to more complex services successfully and we have not had to roll any service back to GOV.UK PaaS.”

Co-designing the platform with service teams

While we were migrating services, we also worked closely with DBT to build a new cloud platform. We didn’t just replace GOV.UK PaaS, we created a platform that makes it easier for teams to deliver quickly and safely.

By embedding our engineers into DBT’s delivery teams, we got a clear understanding of their day-to-day needs and pain points. Using their feedback we shaped the platform’s features, making sure it was secure and flexible enough to grow over time. 

We focused on:

We also automated the setup using Infrastructure as Code (IaC), which kept environments consistent and reduced errors. Every part of the platform was designed with developers in mind. To help them move faster without compromising on security or quality.

This isn’t just about replacing GOV.UK PaaS. It’s about creating a best-in-class platform that enables teams to build, innovate and deliver faster. Achieving this level of maturity takes collaboration, iteration and user input.”

James Colhoun, DBT Chief Architect

Source: Delivering-seamless-migrations-and-a-future-ready-platform 

The results: Successful migration of critical services

We’ve now successfully migrated the majority of services, with no rollbacks and no major incidents. This includes several critical systems essential to DBT’s ability to operate and serve users. Our structured, collaborative approach meant we could scale migrations quickly and safely, while continuously improving the process.

Key outcomes include:

• no service rollbacks during the migration, with smooth transitions for even the most complex, public-facing services.
• strong delivery pace, made possible through embedded support, automation, and real-time coordination.
• high team confidence, supported by dedicated migration engineers and clear, tested cutover processes.
• The platform provides service teams with greater autonomy. By enabling self-service tools, developers can manage and deploy their services independently, reducing friction and speeding up delivery.
• with built-in security features, the new platform meets strict government compliance standards. Flexible governance policies also ensure the services are compliant without limiting agility.
• the platform can now scale with DBT’s needs. It’s designed to handle increased demand as services and users grow, remaining cost effective and efficient.

Migrating a complex digital service such as ours inevitably involves managing uncertainty. If we had any worries about that, our platform migration team helped put our minds at rest. Their knowledge, experience and approach ensured a safe and successfully migrated platform. We’re very happy that our new platform performs as we’d hoped and offers a great deal more besides!” 

Paul Pepper, Software Engineer (Tariff Application Platform)

Source: Delivering-seamless-migrations-and-a-future-ready-platform 

What’s next?

Our journey with DBT didn’t stop at migrating critical services. Together, we’re continuing to evolve the platform. We’re improving onboarding, simplifying infrastructure and supporting teams to innovate faster and more securely.

For departments facing the end of GOV.UK PaaS or other large-scale migrations, this work shows what’s possible: with the right support, structured planning and focus on user needs, even the most complex estates can be transitioned smoothly.

For more information on the services we offer to central government visit our web pages.

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