Microland modernized cloud operations for the UK’s second-largest gas distributor with AI-powered intelligeni CloudOps

Microland’s client is a UK-based gas distribution company that supplies natural and green gas to 6 million households and businesses across Scotland and England, managing over 44,000 kilometers of gas pipelines. The environment consists of 1000+ servers with a multitude of OS and database flavors and legacy applications such as SCADA systems in a hybrid cloud environment with IT-OT integration, hosting applications that run 'critical national infrastructure’ with high security and regulatory compliance needs. By transforming the client’s hybrid cloud operations, Microland mitigated more than 26,000 vulnerabilities, enhanced operational efficiency and regulatory compliance, and delivered customized AWS support, ultimately reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) by 25%.  

Business Challenges

The client’s operations were managed through a mix of hyperscaler-managed services and third-party MSPs. However, this fragmented model created significant challenges: 

• GD2 Compliance Pressure: The client needed to align with GD2 compliance standards, which required reducing operating costs and addressing security vulnerabilities that carried the risk of severe penalties. 
• Escalating Costs and Rigid Contracts: The existing operating model drove unsustainable costs, including a £10 million overrun annually, while inflexible contracting frameworks hindered adaptability and created compliance gaps. 
• Locked-in, Proprietary Automation: Automation tools provided by the hyperscaler were inaccessible to internal teams and other partners, leading to silos, non-standard practices, and dependency on proprietary solutions. 
• Slow Vulnerability Remediation: Vulnerabilities across middleware, databases, and application runtimes were addressed too slowly, heightening compliance and security risks. 
• Lack of Continuous Improvement: There were no year-on-year commitments to enhance service performance or optimize costs, limiting reliability and long-term business value.

Confronted with these challenges, the client launched a transformation RFP to identify a secure, cost-efficient, and future-ready cloud operations partner. 

Microland's Solution

Microland partnered with a leading global utility consulting and solutions provider to design a strategy for hosting critical business services in a hybrid cloud environment while transitioning operations from hyperscaler-managed services to Microland Managed Services. 

The transition was highly complex, as it involved a strict 25-day offboarding timeline from the hyperscaler, a dual-vendor transition, and a cutover process that deviated from standard practices. Automation was excluded from the transition - access to automation tools was maintained only until the final day of offboarding, with no handover of automation by the hyperscaler provider. 

To address this, Microland conducted a comprehensive assessment of the existing environment, covering access, automation, deployments, and services, to uncover potential risks and challenges. Based on these insights, a detailed, customized, and phase-wise transition roadmap was created to minimize disruption and ensure seamless onboarding into Microland’s Managed Services. 

Microland modernized the client’s cloud operations using its intelligeni CloudOps platform, an advanced AIOps solution grounded in AutomatedOps, GitOps, and SRE principles. By integrating bot-driven automation for patching, IaC-based configuration management, and end-to-end infrastructure and application deployment through 60+ CI/CD pipelines, the platform streamlined operations, minimized manual effort, and accelerated deployment cycles, laying the foundation for a secure, compliant, and future-ready hybrid cloud environment. 

This approach enabled automated remediation, vulnerability patching, and change management, reducing manual intervention, accelerating resolution cycles, and ensuring adherence to regulatory compliance requirements. 

Microland’s engagement model provided comprehensive management of a complex hybrid cloud environment consisting of VMs, multiple CI/CD pipelines, storage, and integrations, including: 

• 24x7x365 AWS platform management 
• Vulnerability and patch management for Critical National Infrastructure 
• Release, availability, and capacity management 
• Single-window SCADA management to enable data-driven operational insights 
• Customizable AWS support for adding/removing services, rapid infrastructure deployment, and assisting developer teams with testing and releases 

In addition, Microland delivered key modernization outcomes: 

• Vulnerability Remediation: Implemented intelligeni bots for patching EC2 instances, reducing cycle times, improving productivity, and strengthening security posture and compliance.
• Agile Automation: Deployed custom AWS-approved intelligeni bots for flawless patching of Standalone EC2, ASG groups, and business-critical applications, achieving a 100% success rate with minimal downtime.
• Regulatory Compliance: Brought the environment to full compliance with stringent regulatory requirements, reducing exposure to cyberattacks and avoiding potential penalties.
• Enhanced DevOps: Transformed semi-automated CI/CD pipelines into fully automated workflows, accelerating provisioning, minimizing manual tasks, and establishing standardized artifact, image, and deployment procedures. Created Jenkins-based pipelines for DB refresh activities and Oracle Database patching.
• Agentic AI Integration: Integrated Agentic AI into the DevOps pipeline for non-OS patching with serverless architecture for code deployment, reducing code generation effort from 3 weeks to just 10 minutes, driving intelligent automation, faster remediation, and a significant reduction in operational overhead.
• Optimized Operations: Streamlined application deployment processes, reducing turnaround time from 3 weeks to just 1 day, thereby enhancing market competitiveness and customer satisfaction. 
• Future-Ready Cloud: Eliminated vendor lock-in by replacing hyperscaler-specific tools with Terraform and cloud-agnostic alternatives, creating a flexible, resilient, and future-proof foundation for multi-cloud CI/CD pipelines.
• Domain Consolidation: Migrated applications, users, and servers from the AWS domain to the SGN domain with proper application/service-based categorization, thereby simplifying management, enhancing user accessibility, and strengthening governance across services.
• Lambda functions: Implemented tag-based automation to shut down non-production servers after business hours, reducing costs.

Business Outcomes

Microland delivered services from its ISO27001-accredited digital hubs, enabling the client to achieve significant business, operational, and compliance outcomes, including:

• 25% reduction in operating costs, helping the client meet GD2 requirements imposed by Ofgem for price control.
• Mitigation of more than 45,000 vulnerabilities, significantly strengthening the security posture of critical national infrastructure.
• 96% reduction in MTTR, for key incident categories, accelerating remediation and operational processes.
• 70% improvement in patching compliance, ensuring a stronger defense against cybersecurity threats.
• 95% reduction in provisioning time, enabling faster delivery of infrastructure and applications.
• Highly customizable AWS support, allowing rapid service enablement, quick infrastructure deployment, and enhanced support for developer teams in testing and release management.

Through this transformation, Microland not only delivered immediate cost savings and security improvements but also established a future-ready hybrid cloud foundation. By combining AI-powered operations, automation, and deep domain expertise, Microland positioned the client to seamlessly adapt to regulatory changes, scale innovation, and achieve long-term digital transformation goals.