Technology Approach¶
CDS is tech-agnostic at the engagement level. We engage with the client's problem first, then bring the right technology. We don't lead with a stack and work backwards to a problem.
But tech-agnostic doesn't mean we have no opinions. Where we have deep expertise — accumulated through years of real delivery at national scale — we bring that depth with confidence. We are tech-agnostic where it serves the client, and deeply opinionated where it serves the outcome.
Where we have the deepest expertise¶
Cloudflare is our most significant area of technical depth. We are the first organisation in EMEA to hold Cloudflare Authorised Service Delivery Partner status and the most certified Cloudflare partner in EMEA — a position built on a substantial body of real delivery work, not a partner programme membership. Our Cloudflare capability spans the full stack: edge security, WAF, DDoS protection, Zero Trust network access, and the Developer Platform (Workers, Pages, R2, D1, Workers AI). See the Cloudflare page for how we work with it in practice.
Appian is our primary case management and process automation platform. We have delivered Appian at scale for national regulatory bodies — including a platform serving 96,000+ regulated professionals. We are an Appian delivery partner with named-account experience at scale.
CMS-led delivery on Optimizely and Umbraco at national scale. Platforms we've delivered include a national policing service used across 43 forces, a high-traffic national rail information service sustaining 10 million daily requests, a financial regulator's rulebook platform, and a major asset manager's client portal.
Azure for cloud migration and run at high-stakes scale. Proven across central government and regulated environments, including complex migrations where downtime was not an option.
Across the broader stack¶
Beyond our deepest partnerships, CDS has strong delivery capability across the platforms our clients use. AWS at extreme scale — a national rail information service sustaining 10 million daily requests at 99.99% availability. AI-enabled applications, with working proof-of-concepts in production on the Cloudflare AI stack. AI-assisted development embedded across our engineering teams as standard practice.
The technology choices on any given engagement are driven by what genuinely serves the client's situation — their existing estate, their team's capability, their regulatory context, and their long-term ownership needs. We will recommend against our own preferred stack if it isn't the right answer. And if we ever feel the need to force a technology into a solution where it doesn't belong, we've already gone wrong.
Technology partners¶
| Partner | Area |
|---|---|
| Cloudflare | Edge security, ZTNA, Developer Platform — first EMEA ASDP and ZTNA ASDP |
| Appian | Case management and process automation |
| Optimizely | CMS-led platform delivery at national scale |
| Umbraco | CMS-led platform delivery at national scale |
| Microsoft Azure | Cloud migration, hosting, and run |