Microsoft solutions provider Avanade has completed the first phase of a project to bring state-of-the-art cloud infrastructure to EDF's Hinkley Point C (HPC), providing a secure cloud platform to support the construction of the UK's first nuclear power plant to be built in over 20 years. Additional applications will be migrated in future phases.

A different sort of cloud in this view of a bunker lid lift during HPC construction (Image: EDF)

Avanade said the company, which is part-owned by Microsoft, and HPC overcame challenges unique to the nuclear power industry, including intensive security, data retention and regulatory considerations through Avanade's unique and robust Cloud Foundations methodology combined with the Microsoft Azure platform.

Avanade Project Lead Peter Jennings said the "ground-breaking" project demonstrated the critical role of the cloud in the "most ambitious and sensitive" of projects. "The state-of-the-art cloud infrastructure underpinning HPC's construction will enable thousands of workers to better collaborate and manage the UK's biggest sustainable energy project in a generation," he said. "With our partners at Hinckley Point C, we have built an extremely secure and scalable IT infrastructure, with a high degree of automation that delivers greater efficiency.”

Given the scale of the HPC project - one of the largest construction projects in Europe - it needed an IT infrastructure with security and scale at its core, Avanade said. The company worked in collaboration with HPC to design and build the new secure cloud environment, bringing together components from HPC's existing infrastructure and the Azure Cloud to control access to information. This provided a secure foundation for the migration of key services, new servers and document storage.

"Many thousands" of additional field personnel are now using the platform and information to support build activities, Avanade said. It has also streamlined processes so that over half the tasks required across Avanade, EDF and other third parties are automated.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News