Delivering global workforce transformation through hyperscale cloud adoption at Hays

Introduction to customer and challenge

Hays Recruitment, a global leader in recruitment with over 10,000 employees in 31 countries, faced a major challenge: its datacentres were closing by end of 2025. To address this looming deadline, Hays needed to devise an actionable plan for migrating their critical infrastructure and applications to modern hosting environments.
The need to change precipitated the creation of 3 strategic goals;

Business continuity

As the operator of payroll for a vast and dispersed workforce, system downtime or data loss would have catastrophic consequences.

Future-proofing

Hays recognised the migration as an opportunity to modernise, seeking improvements in disaster recovery, scalability, cost visibility, and security.

Timeliness

The fixed timeline necessitated short-term, interim migration approaches, with the understanding that further development and optimisation would follow the initial transition.

Hays are responsible for running payroll for tens of thousands of workers worldwide, and manage the largest European PeopleSoft deployment of its kind. These mission-critical systems ensure the seamless operation of their business, supporting both their own staff and the extensive contractor workforce they manage.

In short, Hays needed to ensure business continuity by moving their PeopleSoft systems to one or more hyperscale cloud platforms. The complexity and criticality of their operations demanded a partner with deep expertise in managing large-scale cloud migrations, especially for platforms like PeopleSoft.

Solution

Our team encompassed a breadth and depth of expertise spanning PeopleSoft and hyperscaler migration strategies, which was clearly demonstrated throughout our presentation.

During supplier Q&A, we addressed every question with candour and authority, drawing on our substantial experience in PeopleSoft to identify possible challenges and proactively propose robust alternative approaches. This transparent engagement not only reinforced our technical credibility but also underscored our commitment to client success through thoughtful, solution-oriented consultation.

Upon successful contract award, in conjunction with the Hays project team and stakeholders, we carried out the following key phases of the engagement;

Discovery and assessment

A thorough discovery phase identified all systems and assets, which included 1,700 virtual machines, over 100 Oracle databases, 340 SQL databases and around 585TB of data.

License assessment

During discovery, we clarified the clients’ current license estate, migration coverage, and rightsizing for their future hybrid cloud environment to achieve optimal licensing.

Strategic planning

Working closely with Hays, the team developed a migration roadmap, balancing the need for rapid transition with longer-term transformation goals.

Transparent communication

Regular, open dialogue ensured the Hays project team and stakeholders were aware of potential risks, common pitfalls, and key focus areas, fostering trust and alignment.

Vendor negotiation

Our team engaged directly with the hyperscalers, negotiating competitive pricing while ensuring all configurations met Hays’ needs.

Multi-cloud migration

The migration was executed across multiple hyperscalers—including AWS, Azure, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)—to ensure optimal fit for various workloads.

Managed services adoption

As systems migrated, the team provided comprehensive managed services, dovetailing support with Hays’ own application teams for maximum uptime and service continuity.

The approach was iterative and responsive. When the newly appointed CTO asked to accelerate the timeline, the team recalibrated plans to meet the increased urgency—demonstrating agility and commitment to delivery.

The engagement with Hays resulted in a seamless and successful migration of their core infrastructure and applications from their datacentres to a state-of-the-art, multi-cloud environment. All systems were migrated with no downtime or data loss and met all delivery milestones.

Key deliverables included:

Full migration of critical systems

All major systems, including the business-critical Oracle and SQL servers, and the PeopleSoft payroll platform, were successfully moved to a combination of OCI, AWS, and Azure.

Optimised cloud architecture

The new environment supports scalability according to workload demand, automated builds, and rapid failover in case of disaster.

Comprehensive ASPIRE managed service

The team provided ongoing PeopleSoft and cloud managed services, maintaining infrastructure reliability, security, and performance in close partnership with Hays’s own IT staff. The migration was carefully aligned with the ASPIRE managed service framework adoption, increasing support proportionally as more systems were brought online in the cloud

Software asset management

The project included robust asset management and license optimisation for the cloud, ensuring Hays received the best possible value from their software and cloud investment and avoided the reputation and financial risk of noncompliance.

Enhanced security and reliability

The transition included improvements in patching, maintenance, and overall system resilience.

Outcomes

The cloud migration project has delivered substantial benefits to Hays, both immediately and as an investment in their future capabilities:

• Business continuity and reliability By migrating to a modern, multi-cloud architecture, Hays ensured their payroll and recruitment services remained uninterrupted, supporting their global workforce without disruption.
• Operational resilience The new disaster recovery solutions enable rapid recovery and failover, significantly reducing risk from outages or data loss.
• Scalability and agility With systems now able to scale dynamically to meet workload demands, Hays can accommodate business growth and fluctuations with ease.
• Cost optimisation Through rightsizing, license optimisation, and efficient use of cloud resources (with the ability to spin resources up and down as needed), Hays achieved cloud cost savings compared to their previous datacentre model.
• Collaborative success The strong partnership between Hays and the migration team fostered trust, transparency, and mutual respect, ensuring the project’s success and setting a foundation for ongoing cooperation.

Ultimately, Hays’s migration story is one of proactive transformation—turning a major challenge into an opportunity to build a modern, resilient, and efficient IT landscape. As a result, Hays is better positioned than ever to deliver outstanding results for their clients and workforce around the world.

“Version 1 has worked closely to understand the importance and detail of the Hays migration strategy. The execution of the migration was outstanding and built upon their knowledge and experience, but also the Version 1 team meshed brilliantly with the Hays team to the point that they were indivisible. It has been a tremendous success and an enjoyed experience.“