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Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS

gds.blog.gov.uk

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Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS

#101

Post by chadwcarlson »

capableweb wrote: post #5
whylo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GOV.UK PaaS always ran on top of AWS (though in UK and Ireland regions), so it's always been dependent on a US company anyway

Is there any Europe-based PaaS currently operating, that are noteworthy? Most companies seems to be US-based.

Platform.sh is another (employee here). We're a French PaaS and DevOps platform. So we provide hosting, but also every bit of operations needed to provision infrastructure and true staging environments for every pull request/branch with just a `git branch`. We work with Azure, GCP, AWS for 9+ regions across the globe, many of those in Europe. This has allowed us to also provide the backend for OVHCloud's WebPaaS (https://www.ovhcloud.com/en-gb/web-paas/) behind-the-scenes.

Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS

#102

Post by kitbrennan »

wyuenho wrote: post #92
wyuenho wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Quoted post unavailable.

I realise I’m just replying to a troll’s cherry picked list at this point, but come on you’re not even trying.

All of those chips and fabs all rely on ASML? Those manufacturers you list literally couldn’t make the chips they make without an EU company being the backbone of their work.

You can’t think of global scale European applications. SAP, the worlds third largest software company by revenue? Representative of the EU’s tech sector, probably not, but it goes to show your either ignorant of the wider industry in the EU or being deceiving.

> Open banking and SEPA. Are these technologies? I think they were just regulations.

Turns out regulations can be a good thing? Our banking infrastructure ‘just works’, instantly, EU wide, with low fees and technology first.

> Wake up.

People get real holiday, great purchasing power (sure, not as high as a US tech worker, but pretty darn good), healthcare that doesn’t bankrupt them, proper mental health treatment so walking down a street isn’t a gamble, great affordable education, and the pleasure of not having a mass shooting multiple times a week. But yeah, the US has some big companies. Good for you bud.

Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS

#103

Post by fauigerzigerk »

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #40
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SEPA is good but not that good. It normally takes two days for my money to arrive, longer over weekends and holidays. The UK Faster Payments system actually does work within seconds most of the time, but only within the UK.

The SEPA Instant Credit Transfer scheme introduced in 2017 introduced 10-second transfers. Not all banks are participating yet, particularly in (south-)eastern Europe, but it's a fast growing share, and in my home country (the Netherlands) just about everyone does.

All of my SEPA transfers after 2017 took days and none of them involved banks in (south-)eastern Europe. But it's good to hear that things are improving.

Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS

#104

Post by revjx »

asib wrote: post #6

They mention a handful of services like GOV.UK Notify, GOV.UK Pay, the GOV.UK Design System, the Prototype Kit, and the new GOV.UK Forms product. Is anyone able to clarify whether these things are collectively referred to or considered part of the Gov.uk PaaS offering (and therefore will all be decomissioned) or not? It wasn't clear to me from the article and I'm not otherwise familiar.

We use GovPaas for a few things. GovPaas provides the platform which we deploy our applications onto (under the hood it's Cloud Foundry).

It is incredibly cheap for our use cases (as it turns out, unsustainably so for the team who provide it!). Our interpretation of this news is that we will need to migrate away to another platform.

Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS

#105

Post by jeromenerf »

capableweb wrote: post #5
whylo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GOV.UK PaaS always ran on top of AWS (though in UK and Ireland regions), so it's always been dependent on a US company anyway

Is there any Europe-based PaaS currently operating, that are noteworthy? Most companies seems to be US-based.

"Europe based": yes, we are french.

"Currently operating": yes, steadily, for seven years now.

"Noteworthy": yes, I really hope we are, at least, we have been quite newsworthy recently

"Most companies seems to be US-based": well, we have US employees and we are running on top of US based companies infrastructure, amongst others.

o/

--

platform.sh

Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS

#106

Post by InTheArena »

mordae wrote: post #2

Quoted post unavailable.

Um. You may want to tone this down a bit.

The current solution is Cloudfoundry.

On AWS.

They are simply doing what every other CF customer is doing - realizing that the platform they chose to run on is dead.

Last I looked, no one was holding a gun to any Europeans head saying "You must only use evil US software comrade!"

In fact, I think it's a European who is holding a gun to other Europeans heads at the moment.

Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS

#107

Post by nonrandomstring »

mordae wrote: post #2

Quoted post unavailable.

We're not abandoning the idea, just the current project architecture. Reading more carefully, it's saying the architecture PaaS is currently built on is reaching the end of its days. It's natural to revise this after 7 years. Outcomes of the next round may be a new PaaS for government (and hopefully civil) deployments, with more flexibility around the cloud targets to allow hybrid on-prem, colo, and mixed cloud substrate. If anything that strengthens hybrid resilience against mono-cultures or foreign influence.

Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS

#108

Post by Veen »

capableweb wrote: post #5
whylo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GOV.UK PaaS always ran on top of AWS (though in UK and Ireland regions), so it's always been dependent on a US company anyway

Is there any Europe-based PaaS currently operating, that are noteworthy? Most companies seems to be US-based.

I understand the intent of the question, but in this case a UK-based alternative would be preferable, not just a European alternative. The UK is more likely to find itself at odds with France than the U.S.

That thought reminds me of a conversation in an episode of Yes Prime Minister:

> Hacker: I sometimes wonder why we need the [nuclear] weapons.

> Sir Humphrey: Minister! You're not a unilateralist?

> Hacker: I sometimes wonder, you know.

> Sir Humphrey: Well, then, you must resign from the government!

> Hacker: Ah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not that unilateralist! Anyway, the Americans will always protect us from the Russians, won't they?

> Sir Humphrey: Russians? Who's talking about the Russians?

> Hacker: Well, the independent deterrent.

> Sir Humphrey: It's to protect us against the French!

Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS

#109

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

atwood22 wrote: post #25
mordae wrote: post #2

Quoted post unavailable.

Don't feel bad. Europeans have a much better work-life balance. Plenty of parental leave. A culture that prioritizes life outside the office. Six weeks of guaranteed vacation that people actually take. Etc. Those things have a price. Namely, when people work less, less innovation happens, which means less productivity growth happens, which means less innovation happens, and so on. I lived in Germany for two years. I…

>Europeans have [...] Six weeks of guaranteed vacation that people actually take.

That is false. EU mandates minimum 4 weeks of PTO across all members but varies wildly according to country, sector and company.

In most EU countries I've seen the average tends to hover around 5 weeks while 6 weeks or more is usually for very generous employers trying to attract top applicants in employee friendly countries.

I get you're attempting a jab at Americans by flashing large number of PTO, but let's be realistic that 6 weeks is not the norm in for all jobs in the whole of Europe.

Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS

#110

Post by tuukkah »

Key paragraph: "In parallel, we are starting a piece of joint work with the Central Digital & Data Office, in partnership with Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) across government, to understand what a future central hosting offer could or should be. We don’t know what we’ll conclude, the options ranging from doing nothing, to creating a reusable set of configuration and management components (similar to the GOV.UK Design System, but for secure cloud hosting) all the way through to building a new PaaS v2 using different architecture."
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