Case Study: British Medical Journal (BMJ) achieves rapid release velocity and multi‑cloud scalability with Rackspace Technology

Rackspace used their private cloud to provide a secure, efficient environment in which BMJ can operate their business

BMJ, one of the world’s oldest and largest medical publishers with 60 specialist journals and millions of readers, faced growing technical debt from organically expanded infrastructure, an inefficient release process, and the need to operate as a 24/7 global business. They sought a partner to help move to continuous integration, automation and a multi‑cloud approach while formalizing support and changing their development culture.

Rackspace built a hybrid multi‑cloud platform—Rackspace Private Cloud (VMware) for core infrastructure, AWS for front‑end workloads and Alibaba Cloud for China—fully virtualizing BMJ (200+ VMs) and implementing automation and DevOps practices. The result was a dramatic improvement in agility and efficiency: releases increased from roughly one per month to up to three per day, scalable on‑demand environments, the ability to offer cloud services in China, and a lasting cultural shift toward automated delivery.

British Medical Journal

Alex Hooper

Head of Operations