Case Study
Driving Cloud Efficiency and Strategic IT Growth at MOSL
Background
Market Operator Services Limited (MOSL) is the market operator for the business retail market in England, sitting at the heart of a complex ecosystem of more than 1.2 million customers and handling over 90,000 transactions every day.
As the central body that ensures smooth market operation, MOSL is responsible for enabling competition, supporting new entrants, and ensuring all participants deliver on performance commitments. Beyond their core function, MOSL continuously collaborates with retailers, wholesalers and stakeholders to identify and drive market improvements.
For over seven years, MOSL has partnered with Academia’s Smartdesc division, trusting them to deliver fully managed IT services and strategic technology guidance that keep their operations secure, efficient, and future-ready.
“Smartdesc have consistently managed our Azure environment with a proactive approach to cost saving and security. As certified Microsoft partners, they have a breadth and depth of technical expertise, who strengthen our own capability, working together as a unified team who get things done.”
Ricardo Wissmann-Alves
- Head of IT Operations & Cyber, MOSL
Solutions
Smartdesc’s partnership with MOSL goes far beyond day-to-day IT support; it’s a strategic collaboration focused on innovation, optimisation and measurable value.
Key elements of the engagement include:
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Strategic IT Planning:
Using Smartdesc’s exclusive IT Health Scorecard Framework, MOSL’s IT environment is continuously assessed to highlight strengths, weaknesses and opportunities. This data-driven approach feeds directly into a jointly developed three-year IT roadmap, ensuring every investment aligns with business goals and delivers lasting impact. - Microsoft Licensing and Azure Cost Optimisation: As a Microsoft Solution Partner and Azure Architect Expert, Smartdesc manages MOSL’s entire Microsoft estate, from licensing to Azure environments, ensuring efficiency, compliance and cost control.
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Multi-Year Subscriptions:
Azure subscriptions and Management Groups were structured to meet the specific needs of MOSL’s application development platform. Smartdesc provides ongoing management, permissions administration and support escalation for developers and third-party partners.
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Leveraging Tier 1 Direct Partnership:
MOSL enjoys 4.5% savings below RRP on Azure usage, maximising value without compromising performance -
Comprehensive Managed Services:
A fully managed 1st–3rd line Service Desk, proactive device and patch management and continuous monitoring through the Enterprise RMM platform ensure MOSL’s IT operations run seamlessly. - Trusted Partnership and Expertise on Demand: Smartdesc acts as a trusted advisor, using service data to inform continual improvement and providing access to specialist expertise in cyber security, data protection, project management and virtual CISO services when needed.
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Innovation Through Collaboration:
Leveraging Smartdesc’s strong vendor relationships, including Microsoft and leading technology providers. MOSL explores emerging topics such as AI and cyber resilience with expert guidance.
Results
The partnership between MOSL and Smartdesc delivers tangible outcomes across strategy, efficiency and cost:
- Reduced Azure spend through proactive optimisation and access to discounted pricing.
- Stronger IT governance via the IT Health Scorecard and executive KPI reporting.
- Enhanced collaboration between MOSL’s internal IT team and Smartdesc’s certified Microsoft experts.
- Operational efficiency through fully managed cloud, on-premise and hybrid infrastructure.
- Improved security and resilience with continuous monitoring, patching, and advisory support.
Our value
Smartdesc offers complementary technology consultations within our Technical Solutions team, to discuss how we can help organisations fully adopt cloud-based solutions. The day-to-day management and maintenance of IT Infrastructure is time-consuming, repetitive and often takes resources away from in house IT teams at the expense of continual service improvement.
Through our IT Health Scorecard Framework – developed over 10+ years of managing organisations’ IT infrastructure, IT health is tracked continuously using KPIs and Executive Reporting, backed up with Management Information to track risks and priorities in non-technical language.