Anil Agarwal

As an Azure FinOps consultant, I recently worked on a cost optimization project for NHS England. The NHS was running a range of workloads in Azure, including web applications, databases, and machine learning projects, resulting in high costs. My primary responsibility was to review their Azure environment and conduct a well-architected framework assessment for cost, performance, and security.

As a result of the assessment, I identified areas where cost savings could be achieved without impacting performance or security. By working closely with the NHS team, he was able to implement recommendations and deliver savings of around 25-30% overall and up to 40-50% in some areas.

My work involved identifying underutilized resources, optimizing storage, reconfiguring networking, and leveraging Azure's reserved instances and other cost-saving tools. I also provided guidance on best practices for Azure cost management and FinOps.

Overall, my expertise in Azure cost optimization and ability to conduct thorough assessments and deliver cost-saving solutions helped the NHS to optimize its Azure environment and reduce its costs significantly while maintaining high levels of performance and security.

Headed a successful migration of the company's entire data center to Azure, consisting of over 100 servers and 650TB of data. During the project, I thoroughly assessed the on-premise infrastructure, identifying workloads and dependencies that needed to be migrated to Azure. To meet the company's business needs, I designed the Azure infrastructure, including virtual machines, storage, and networking services. Additionally, I identified and implemented the necessary security and compliance controls to ensure a secure and compliant infrastructure.

Also, I oversaw the migration execution, which included preparing the on-premise servers for migration, replicating the data to Azure, and configuring the migrated workloads on Azure. Furthermore, I ensured the ongoing health and performance of the Azure infrastructure by implementing monitoring and optimization tools and processes.

Designed and implemented the integration between AkzoNobel's SAP systems and a Coupa SaaS product using Azure technologies, achieving seamless data exchange that met the business requirements. I acted as an Azure architect and consultant.

My task included defining the integration requirements, designing the integration architecture, setting up the Azure environment, and deploying, monitoring, and maintaining the integration.

Working closely with AkzoNobel's IT team, I understood their business processes and data exchange requirements between SAP systems and the Coupa SaaS product. Based on the requirements, I designed the integration architecture using Azure Service Bus and Azure Logic Apps, ensuring it was secure and scalable.

I tested the integration to ensure the seamless data exchange met the business requirements. After successful testing, I deployed the integration to production and provided documentation and training to AkzoNobel's IT team to help them maintain and troubleshoot the integration.

Played a critical role in successfully migrating Lloyds Banking Group's Pega applications to Azure as a cloud solution architect. I started by managing a study program to create an effective strategy for the migration, comparing in detail the implementation of Pega on different cloud providers, like IaaS and Azure and AWS PaaS, and SaaS, i.e., Pega Cloud. This study phase was completed within defined timelines and resulted in savings of circa £1 million per year.

The team I managed consisted of over ten members, including cloud and DevOps engineers, security engineers, Pega developers, testers, and business analysts, both onshore and offshore. I designed and ran a proof of concept for features unavailable in the company's managed cloud. Also, I created high- and low-level designs for the proposed solutions and took them through the governance processes.

Additionally, I architected DevOps build and release pipelines to provision standard enterprise-approved resources, built complete migration and mitigation solutions for on-premise Pega environments to Azure, and drove the DevOps adoption and implementation of toolsets and best practices for automation, configuration, and release management.

Worked with the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) while a lead solution architect for New Signature. They chose me to be their cloud hosting service provider.

My role involved assisting with various technical elements, such as providing cloud advisory services, agile application development, Azure design, implementation, migration services, and cloud-managed services to support new cloud operating models like DevOps.

One of my primary responsibilities was provisioning Azure environments, including sandbox, development, staging, and production environments. The MPS had previously engaged with another company for their subscription and on-premise connectivity to the Azure platform but was unhappy with the overall progress and readiness of the cloud platform. Therefore, I had to ensure that all their subscriptions and environments were ready regarding best practices, security, governance, and access-related requirements.

Working with such a large government organization was both exciting and challenging. In just seven to eight months, I delivered multiple projects, which enabled New Signature to win more business with the MPS.

Migrated a crime reporting information system (CRIS) from its current on-premise platform to the newly hosted Azure platform during my time as a lead solution architect at the MPS via New Signature. This system is used by over 50,000 officers.

I oversaw various aspects of the project, including defining the high- and low-level design for the Azure environment. I collaborated closely with the AMS teams to facilitate the refactoring of the application using cloud-native components such as microservices, web apps, Azure Functions, and containerization.

Additionally, I was involved in designing, building, and deploying the application with a mix of IaaS and PaaS components. I also created a one-click deployment script using JSON and ARM templates and developed build and release pipelines to deploy the application in the development, test, and production environments.

Worked on an exciting project with FedEx after they acquired TNT in May 2016. Their culture emphasizes technology as the central nervous system behind all business processes, enabling continued innovation.

In this project, I discussed with Microsoft experts to decide on cloud best practices around security, network routing, SCCM processes, and more. As part of my role, I participated in design discussions at the enterprise and application levels, evaluated various services offered by Azure through POCs, and worked with teams to ensure Azure services' consumption efficiently and reliably.

I assisted the information security team with assessments of the customer on the designed Azure architecture. Also, I selected migration approaches to lift and shift workloads to Azure or architecting a greenfield development and/or production platform for new applications. I drove the quality of the onboarding plan and reported to the business about implementation and ongoing cost estimates. Additionally, I documented and shared technical best practices and insights with engineering and the architect community.

Led the planning, designing, and supporting mailroom solutions for a £25 million per annum business comprising six scanning and record management centers across the UK. I worked as a technical architect, and this role required me to balance managing our highly skilled technical teams with supporting the development of our technical environment to meet the tactical and strategic needs of the business.

In this position, I maintained an innovative approach while managing the delivery of all technical activities across our design, development, and testing teams, ensuring that we kept high standards and delivered high-quality services within governed environments.

With my extensive experience and understanding of trends in the ECM and RM market, I researched new offerings brought to market and formalized technical strategies that leveraged these developments to build the capabilities that helped our business achieve a stronger position in the market.

The clients I worked for were:

• HMLR
• Durham and Darlington NHS Trust
• UCHW
• Ministry of Defense
• National Archive of the UK
• PPI Claim Line and Stanton Fisher
• Newham Council
• Lloyds Bank
• Ipsos

As an Azure FinOps consultant, Anil recently worked on a cost optimization project for NHS England. The NHS was running a range of workloads in Azure, including web applications, databases, and machine learning projects, which were resulting in high costs. His primary responsibility was to review their Azure environment and conduct a Well-Architected Framework assessment for cost, performance, and security.

As a result of the assessment, Anil identified areas where cost savings could be achieved without impacting performance or security. By working closely with the NHS team, I was able to implement recommendations and deliver savings of around 25-30% overall and up to 40-50% in some areas.

Anil's work involved identifying underutilized resources, optimizing storage, reconfiguring networking, and leveraging Azure's reserved instances and other cost-saving tools. He also provided guidance on best practices for Azure cost management and FinOps.

Overall, Anil's expertise in Azure cost optimization and ability to conduct thorough assessments and deliver cost-saving solutions helped the NHS to optimize their Azure environment and reduce their costs significantly while maintaining high levels of performance and security.