The events of 2025 marked a significant shift in how organisations across the UK view cyber risk, operational resilience and the role of cloud technology. High-profile cyber attacks on major UK retailers, including household names such as Marks & Spencer, brought the reality of modern cyber threats firmly into the public eye. These incidents demonstrated that even large, well-resourced organisations are not immune to disruption when systems, data and operations are targeted.
The economic impact of cybercrime is now impossible to ignore. Globally, cybercrime damages are projected to reach $10.5 trillion annually. In the UK alone, cyber attacks are estimated to be costing the economy around £14.7 billion each year, equivalent to approximately 0.5% of national GDP. This scale of impact highlights that cyber security is no longer just an IT concern - it is a board-level business issue with direct consequences for financial performance, customer trust and organisational resilience.
Against this backdrop, organisations across both the public and private sectors are re-evaluating their technology strategies, with cloud adoption playing a central role.
Cloud Momentum Across Public and Private Sectors
In the UK public sector, the move to cloud has been underway for more than a decade. The Government’s G-Cloud framework, first launched in 2012, was designed to simplify the procurement of cloud-based services and accelerate digital transformation across public bodies. Today, G-Cloud continues to provide a trusted and compliant route for organisations to access secure cloud solutions - and Crown is proud to be part of this framework.
While G-Cloud is specific to public sector procurement, the same drivers underpinning this shift - resilience, scalability, security and cost efficiency - are equally relevant to private sector organisations. In fact, many private sector businesses are now facing similar pressures around availability, data protection, auditability and operational continuity, particularly in light of recent cyber incidents.
As a result, cloud adoption is no longer viewed as a public sector initiative or a technology trend. It is increasingly recognised as a strategic decision that supports business resilience and long-term sustainability.
Rethinking On-Premise vs Managed Cloud
For many organisations, the decision to move to cloud still involves a comparison between on-premise infrastructure and managed cloud services. At first glance, on-premise deployments can appear more cost-effective, particularly when only initial capital expenditure is considered. However, this often underestimates the true total cost of ownership.
Crown’s Managed Cloud Service (MCS) is a fully self-contained solution that delivers our workforce and duty management applications ready for consumption. It removes the need for customers to maintain and provide their own IT resources, operations, protection and supporting services for the application.
When evaluating MCS versus on-premise deployments, it is essential to consider both capital and operational expenditure.
Capital Expenditure Considerations
On-premise solutions typically require significant upfront investment in infrastructure that must be continuously provisioned to meet performance and availability requirements. This includes servers, storage, networking equipment, operating system and database licences, as well as the physical space, power, cooling and security needed to support them. Further, given the difficulties in changing the capacity and configuration of physical IT infrastructure after procurement, the capital budget must be sized up to meet the peak capacity demands – a ‘just in case’ approach to investment. This can lead to significantly under-utilised of capacity and higher costs.
By contrast, Crown’s MCS provides and maintains all required infrastructure and capacity as part of the service. The platform is designed with redundancy, resilience and data protection built in, removing the need for customers to make capital investment decisions or manage technology obsolescence. Crown MCS adopts a ‘just in time’ approach to its capacity management, exploiting the configuration flexibility offered by the cloud platform.
Operational Expenditure Considerations
Operating an on-premise environment also carries ongoing operational costs that are often underestimated. These include staffing for system administration and support, hardware maintenance and repairs, software patching and upgrades, backup management, power and cooling and physical and cyber security controls.
Our MCS includes continuous service management covering system health, performance, availability and security. This is delivered through a combination of skilled service management professionals and automation, allowing customers to focus on their core business rather than day-to-day IT operations.
Independent industry research from organisations such as Gartner, International Data Corporation (IDC) and Deloitte indicates that, when infrastructure, staffing, maintenance, resilience and security are fully accounted for, managed cloud solutions can deliver material reductions in total cost of ownership compared to on-premise deployments.
While outcomes vary by workload and scale, these studies commonly identify cost efficiencies in the range of tens of percent, driven by reduced capital expenditure, lower operational overheads and improved utilisation of infrastructure and security services.
Security, Resilience and Shared Responsibility
Beyond cost, cloud adoption plays a critical role in strengthening security and resilience. Managed cloud services benefit from centralised monitoring, consistent patching, robust backup strategies and tested recovery processes. In an environment where cyber threats continue to evolve, these capabilities are increasingly difficult and expensive to replicate in-house.
Importantly, moving to cloud does not remove responsibility for security. Instead, it enables a shared responsibility model where customers benefit from specialist expertise, scale and investment that would be challenging to sustain independently.
Cloud as a Defence Against Cyberattacks
Managed cloud solutions offer multiple advantages against cyber threats:
- Built-in security by design: Gateways, firewalls, intrusion detection and strict access controls are implemented as standard, shielding critical data and application infrastructure from external access
- Rapid patching and updates: Systems are continuously updated to address vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them.
- Data redundancy and disaster recovery: Automated backups and failover systems ensure business continuity.
- 24/7 monitoring and threat detection: AI-driven tools identify suspicious activity quickly, reducing downtime.
- Scalability and resilience: Cloud systems can withstand DDoS attacks and sudden spikes in demand.
- Compliance assurance: MCS aligns with ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials, providing independent assurance of security controls.
In short, managed cloud services are not just a convenience - they are a strategic defence against cyber risks.
