Scottish Government plants seeds for cloud growth

If you spot a drone flying over the Scottish Highlands, don’t be surprised. These days it is likely to be flown by the Scottish Government’s Agricultural and Rural Economy Directorate to verify the boundaries of remote agricultural properties.

This information is vital for the Directorate, which plays a vital role in Scottish agriculture. Drones are just one of the advanced technologies, used to determine subsidy applications made by some 22,000 farms and agricultural businesses who receive payouts worth $1 billion per year.

The way that funds are allocated to farmers has also been transformed in recent years. Instead of calculating payments according to the size of the farming area, the focus is now on environmental outcomes with farmers rewarded for adopting sustainable practices. As well as drones, the Directorate is looking at the possibility of using satellites to estimate carbon storage in hedges and trees grown on farmland.

But for all the talk of aerial technology, Neill Smith, Head of Infrastructure, ARE Directorate, has his feet firmly on the ground. Security and availability are the guiding principles when it comes to the organization’s IT environment. Customers are equally important. “Our principal client is the Scottish Government, but a big measure of success is feedback from the agricultural community,” he says. “If they are happy with the accuracy and timeliness of subsidy payments, then we’ve done a good job.”

This philosophy has served the Directorate well, as has its choice of IT partners who helped the organization throughout its digital transformation journey. F5 played a crucial role in enabling the Directorate to fulfill stringent security and delivery requirements. Products like BIG-IP Access Policy Manager play a vital role helping ensure the rural payments application's high security without compromising user-friendliness.

Now the Directorate is migrating most of its infrastructure to a multi-cloud environment with F5 once more ensuring the availability of business-critical applications and networks. “I’ve always believed that business requirements should dictate your technology, not the other way round,” says Smith. “Thanks to F5 we will be able to take full advantage of a secure cloud environment with none of the risks associated with cloud-vendor lock in.”

Migrating to a distributed multi-cloud environment will bring a huge amount of freedom to the IT team. It will no longer be constrained to one platform and can choose best-in-class services from platforms including AWS, Microsoft Azure, and others. Smith points to Power BI, Microsoft's data visualization software, as an example. He states that the majority of their cloud workloads are currently hosted on AWS. “But with F5 we can plug in to Azure and consume Power BI which is our preferred data insights tool.”

F5 also delivers when providing a secure environment for app-to-app interconnection and consistent policy enforcement across all platforms. “We get the best of both worlds,” says Smith. “We have detailed control and visibility over our apps, without increasing complexity. F5 provides full web app and API protection (WAAP) as well as individual security services.”

Another goal is to be hyper-scaler independent. Smith can already see the potential for F5 Distributed Cloud Services, to enable the Directorate to choose the best hyper-scaler for each specific workload. This would enable it to scale resources up or down quickly without being limited by the capabilities of one provider.

Vendor independence also means that the Directorate can take advantage of competitive pricing models from different cloud providers and avoid lock in, which can lead to higher costs in the long run.

Smith also stresses the important role of the F5 account and technical support teams. Together, they’ve built a strong partnership that goes beyond just purchasing and renewals—it’s built on trust. He also appreciates the insights that F5 brings to the Directorate.

“F5 completely understands our purpose and our technology roadmap,” says Smith. “Unlike some vendors, the F5 team only knocks on the door when they have advice or software that is relevant to our journey.”

Partnership with F5 also enables the Directorate to prepare for the next generation of applications and networking with confidence. “By stripping complexity out of our IT infrastructure, we can double down on advanced technologies that better serve our customers, from drones and satellites to AI and machine learning,” says Smith. “F5 gives us complete peace of mind for the future.”