Six Degrees Technology Group Limited

High performance compute & storage

A high performance self-service IaaS, that supports transactional and demanding requirements, such as ecommerce, ticketing, registration and other demanding high transactional systems. Available as standard on the Six Degrees OFFICAL and Commercial clouds we can offer SLA backed guarantees to over 100,000 IOPS if required.

Features

• Aligned with NCSC Cloud Security Principles
• Infrastructure and application automation using infrastructure as code principals
• Granular resource based hourly billing
• Secure N+1 UK data centres. Data never leaves the UK
• Choice of virtual and bare metal physical resource
• ITIL based service delivery management and reporting
• 24x7x365 availability, service desk, support, monitoring. 99.99% SLA/ availability guarantee
• 99.99% SLA / uptime guarantee
• Guaranteed IOPS
• Connect via internet, PSN Assured or PSN Protect

Benefits

• Highly secure for OFFICIAL and OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE data workloads
• Ideal for both test & development and production environments
• Ideal for demanding transactional systems, supporting over 100,000 IOPS
• Supports any application that runs on x86 architecture
• Automation and orchestration to simplify processes and reduce cost
• Rapidly deploy and scale servers and storage resource
• Easy to use. Self service portal & API. Supports containers
• Automate the deployment and installation applications
• Supports containers (Docker, Swarm) and VMware vCloud, OVM and OpenStack
• Guaranteed IO

£0.01 a virtual machine an hour

• Education pricing available
• Free trial available

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

• Modern Slavery statement

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at publicsector.sales@6dg.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 12

Service ID

740595106217273

Contact

Rob Walton
07813303485
publicsector.sales@6dg.co.uk

Service scope

• Service constraints: No
• System requirements:
  • Requires min. 10 Mbps standard networking (includes reserved bandwidth)
  • X86 operating system and application (non x86 options available)

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: For priority 1 and priority 2 the response SLA is within 30 minutes and for P3 it is within 1 business hour.
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: Yes
• Online ticketing support accessibility: WCAG 2.1 A
• Phone support: Yes
• Phone support availability: 24 hours, 7 days a week
• Web chat support: Web chat
• Web chat support availability: 24 hours, 7 days a week
• Web chat support accessibility standard: WCAG 2.1 A
• Web chat accessibility testing: None.
• Onsite support: Yes, at extra cost
• Support levels: Full support of services are provided as standard via the Public Sector Support Desk. The Support Desk is open 24x7 taking receipt of P1 and P2 incidents, with P3 issues being handled in business hours. The Support Desk is manned by 1st/2nd line support engineers and has direct escalation to the operations team where full 3rd line support is provided. ; ; Six Degrees also provide additional support services such as O/S and application monitoring, server support, patch management, managed backup, and managed DR services. Pricing is provided either per server or as a flat service fee depending on the size of the environment.; ; All customers are allocated a service delivery manager who is responsible for ensuring the smooth delivery of the service, acts as an escalation point for all incidents, and provides full monthly service reporting.
• Support available to third parties: Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

• Getting started: Our services are simple to consume requiring only a browser (and in the case of VMware vCloud a small plug in to be installed). New customers are asked to provide a list of authorised contacts and permission levels with whom we can engage. Those nominated individuals are provided with documentation and if need-be training on how to contact us for support, how to access the ticketing/monitoring portals and how to use VMware vCloud.; All customers are provided documentation for using the Six Degrees IaaS. Six Degrees can also run individual and group training sessions for using these clouds. The sessions are delivered via WebEx or face-to-face.; At a base level Six Degrees don’t charge customers to on-board/off-board from the Six Degrees IaaS. Should an organisation require additional support as part of the on-boarding process, such as project management/detailed technical design, then Six Degrees might need to charge for this. This will be charged as time and materials or as a pre-agreed flat service fee. ; Once engaged with Six Degrees and a contract has been signed we’ll provision a resource area and grant the user access to our self-service portal and ticketing system where support and service requests can be made.
• Service documentation: Yes
• Documentation formats:
  • HTML
  • PDF
  • Other
• Other documentation formats: Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Viso formats are available.
• End-of-contract data extraction: Customers can export their servers to a OVF format and download to their local machines. Where necessary Six Degrees Service Desk can provide solutions for large or complicated migrations away from Six Degrees.
• End-of-contract process: Six Degrees do not charge for off-boarding as standard and organisations can exit the Six Degrees service without penalty. Where reasonable, Six Degrees will support the client exit of the service, export virtual machines, and decommission resource. If full project management or large-scale support is required, then Six Degrees reserve the right to charge the client. This will be agreed in advance, prior to termination.

Using the service

• Web browser interface: Yes
• Using the web interface: Six Degrees have a vCloud Director portal to allow customers to fully manage their environment, such as building, editing and removing resource.
• Web interface accessibility standard: WCAG 2.1 AAA
• Web interface accessibility testing: Six Degrees have not undertaken any direct testing with assistive technology although the vCloud Director Portal provided for customers to access the environment has undergone rigorous assistive technology testing from VMware. Therefore the Six Degrees IaaS is able to support users with disabilities and special requirements.
• API: Yes
• What users can and can't do using the API: All actions that you can perform by the GUI can be achieved via API.
• API automation tools:
  • Ansible
  • Chef
  • SaltStack
  • Terraform
  • Puppet
  • Other
• Other API automation tools: Ernest
• API documentation: Yes
• API documentation formats:
  • HTML
  • ODF
  • PDF
• Command line interface: Yes
• Command line interface compatibility: Linux or Unix
• Using the command line interface: All actions that you can perform by the GUI can be achieved via the CLI

Scaling

• Scaling available: Yes
• Scaling type:
  • Automatic
  • Manual
• Independence of resources: Storage is sold based on fixed IOPS, meaning performance is guaranteed irrespective of other user requirements. We can also provide dedicated virtual and bare metal resource for customers who want to further protect their environment.; ; All customers pay for reserved bandwidth. Six Degrees monitor shared inbound connections at our peering level. If a customers usage becomes unusually high we will be alerted. Where necessary customers traffic will be restricted or black holed (in a DDoS attack) to protect our other customers bandwidth requirements. DDoS service options, both Layer 3/4 and Layer 7, are available as chargeable services should customers require.
• Usage notifications: Yes
• Usage reporting:
  • API
  • Email
  • SMS

Analytics

• Infrastructure or application metrics: Yes
• Metrics types:
  • CPU
  • Disk
  • HTTP request and response status
  • Memory
  • Network
  • Number of active instances
  • Other
• Other metrics:
  • Availability
  • Running Services
• Reporting types: API access

Resellers

• Supplier type: Not a reseller

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Conforms to BS7858:2012
• Government security clearance: Up to Developed Vetting (DV)

Asset protection

• Knowledge of data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Data storage and processing locations: United Kingdom
• User control over data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Datacentre security standards: Complies with a recognised standard (for example CSA CCM version 3.0)
• Penetration testing frequency: At least once a year
• Penetration testing approach: ‘IT Health Check’ performed by a CHECK service provider
• Protecting data at rest:
  • Physical access control, complying with CSA CCM v3.0
  • Encryption of all physical media
  • Other
• Other data at rest protection approach: SAN storage encrypted at rest. Customer can use own encryption at the OS level.
• Data sanitisation process: Yes
• Data sanitisation type: Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
• Equipment disposal approach: Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v.30, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001

Backup and recovery

• Backup and recovery: Yes
• What’s backed up: Backups can be taken of server states and data repositories.
• Backup controls: Backups are configured to the customers requirements via the service desk.
• Datacentre setup: Multiple datacentres with disaster recovery
• Scheduling backups: Users contact the support team to schedule backups
• Backup recovery: Users contact the support team

Data-in-transit protection

• Data protection between buyer and supplier networks:
  • Private network or public sector network
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
  • Other
• Other protection between networks: A virtual private network is created for each customer. This is logically isolated from other networks and each are controlled by a firewall for security.
• Data protection within supplier network:
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
  • Other
• Other protection within supplier network: A virtual private network is created for each customer. This is logically isolated from other networks and each are controlled by a firewall for security.

Availability and resilience

• Guaranteed availability: Six Degrees offer a 99.99% availability SLA on all components up to the OS.
• Approach to resilience: All components have been built in fully resilient pairs. With fully resilient networking links between all components and to external third parties, including multiple ISPs. For host availability Six Degrees use VMware’s HA failover for redundancy.
• Outage reporting: All infrastructure is monitored on the network 24/7. Should there be an outage monitoring alerts are sent to the Public Sector operations team via e-mail and SMS.

Identity and authentication

• User authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
  • Limited access network (for example PSN)
  • Dedicated link (for example VPN)
  • Other
• Other user authentication: 2+1 factor authentication using a certificate, token and password to access the Public Sector VPN which is required to reach the vCloud Service. API is additional protected with a WAF
• Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels: Only authorised contacts are granted access rights to Public Sector cloud allowing them to connect to the secure VPN to manage their service. The Service Desk for support will only accept requests from authorised contacts. Communication with anybody at Six Degrees will need to be pre-approved by a known individual in writing. Management of the infrastructure is via dedicated connectivity and out of band of customer data and customer networks
• Access restriction testing frequency: At least once a year
• Management access authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
  • Limited access network (for example PSN)
  • Dedicated link (for example VPN)
  • Other
• Description of management access authentication: 2+1 factor authentication using a certificate, token and password to access the Public Sector VPN which is required to reach the service, including management areas.
• Devices users manage the service through: Any device but through a bastion host (a bastion host is a server that provides access to a private network from an external network such as the internet)

Audit information for users

• Access to user activity audit information: Users have access to real-time audit information
• How long user audit data is stored for: At least 12 months
• Access to supplier activity audit information: Users contact the support team to get audit information
• How long supplier audit data is stored for: At least 12 months
• How long system logs are stored for: At least 12 months

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: Yes
• Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001: Lloyd's Register Quality Assurance (LRQA)
• ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date: 17/04/2020
• What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover: N/A
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: Yes
• Who accredited the PCI DSS certification: Convergent Network Solutions
• PCI DSS accreditation date: 01/06/2018
• What the PCI DSS doesn’t cover: Only the physical and environmental security at Six Degrees' data centres in Birmingham, London and Studley were included in this assessment. The relates to the provision of the secure physical environment for the Colocation Services with Six Degrees provides to its clients. All other services provided by Six Degrees, internal systems supporting business operations or for other clients are specifically excluded from this assessment.
• Other security certifications: Yes
• Any other security certifications:
  • PSN Compliance Certified
  • Cyber Essentials Plus

Security governance

• Named board-level person responsible for service security: Yes
• Security governance certified: Yes
• Security governance standards:
  • ISO/IEC 27001
  • Other
• Other security governance standards: ISO 27001:2013, Cyber Essentials, PSN
• Information security policies and processes: All ISO 27001:2013 controls and associated policies are in place. Enhanced weekly and also quarterly external approved scanning vendor (ASV) vulnerability scanning. Six Degrees also comply with our PSN CoCo which is aligned to our security principles that allows us to deliver our customers PSN Secure and Protect.; Six Degrees operate a rolling internal audit programme to ensure continuity of compliance to our various accreditations, as well as internal technical auditing of our systems through the use of various integrity checks. This is ensures that there is always a fully justified and documented Change Request for any modification of our secure systems.

Operational security

• Configuration and change management standard: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Configuration and change management approach: All non-standard changes must be pre-authorised by going through a peer, senior and CAB approval process. Standard changes are created in template form and are approved in CAB before being implement into Change controls.
• Vulnerability management type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Vulnerability management approach: Six Degrees (Public Sector) run an internal vulnerability test once a week. All reported vulnerabilities that are reported are categorised into priority depending on the severity and a case is logged with the operation team who will fix the vulnerability under the time frames dictated by Public sector patching policy. This conforms to the PCI-DSS standard.
• Protective monitoring type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Protective monitoring approach: Six Degrees (Public Sector) have a protective monitoring system where all logs are centralised and checked on a daily basis for security breaches using several key search filters. Alerts are sent out for high risk activity and are pro-actively responded to by the operations and security teams. This conforms to the PCI-DSS standard.
• Incident management type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example, CSA CCM v3.0 or ISO/IEC 27035:2011 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Incident management approach: Six Degrees operate an ITIL aligned incident management process with associated procedures for security related incidents. The process has a clearly defined governance framework, including roles & responsibilities, clear policies and associated KPIs. This process conforms to PCI DSS.

Secure development

• Approach to secure software development best practice: Supplier-defined process

Separation between users

• Virtualisation technology used to keep applications and users sharing the same infrastructure apart: Yes
• Who implements virtualisation: Supplier
• Virtualisation technologies used: VMware
• How shared infrastructure is kept separate: The Public Sector cloud is multi tenanted and is logically partitioned between its customers using virtual private networks safe guarded from each other using dedicated firewall partitions. The self-service portal only allows access to the resource that has been granted to that particular customer at login and they cannot see or control other areas.

Energy efficiency

• Energy-efficient datacentres: Yes
• Description of energy efficient datacentres: Six Degrees use the Ark datacentres in Spring Park, Corsham, and Cody Park, Farnborough, for its public sector cloud services. ARK are Participants of the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centre Energy Efficiency for SQ17, P1, and A9.; ; Through selecting Ark this demonstrates to our clients a commitment to reduce energy and make cost savings during Business As Usual. Working with Ark, clients can save more than £1.1 million and 6,000 tonnes of carbon annually based on a 1MW load, compared with an average data centre facility – lowering the Total Cost of Ownership across the Industry. Situated within secure compounds and boundaries, each Ark protects to Business Impact Level 3 (BIL3) as a minimum, without compromising availability, sustainability or price point. Ark currently has two dedicated data centre campuses spread across 74 acres in Wiltshire and Hampshire, with access to 160MVA of diverse power.

Pricing

• Price: £0.01 a virtual machine an hour
• Discount for educational organisations: Yes
• Free trial available: Yes
• Description of free trial: The free trial version of the Public Sector IaaS is the same as the standard production version. Resource limits and timeframe will be agreed on a case basis.
• Link to free trial: N/A - please contact Six Degrees for a free trial

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

• Modern Slavery statement

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at publicsector.sales@6dg.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.