JISC

Shared Services and the Cloud Programme

To help universities and colleges improve their efficiency and value for money, HEFCE’s University Modernisation Fund has invested £12.5 million in a Shared Services and the Cloud programme. Managed by JISC, this programme allows HE institutions across the UK to share IT infrastructure and, thanks to cloud computing, to run services and software on demand, and therefore creating cost savings.

What the Programme is Providing

This programme has two core elements:

• Shared IT Infrastructure
  Investment of up to £10 million in cloud computing, shared IT infrastructure, support to deliver virtual servers, storage and data management applications.
   
• Shared Services for Administration
  Investment of up to £2.5 million to establish cloud computing and shared services in central administration functions to support learning, teaching, and research.
   

Shared IT Infrastructure Activities:

• A Pilot HE Cloud: Offering cost-effective data management and storage services to universities.
  Eduserv is developing a pilot cloud for universities and colleges. The pilot is intended to reduce the amount of time and money universities spend on developing plans and business cases for in-house data centre infrastructure.
  
  The cloud infrastructure is already being used by projects that provide end-user (eg. students) access to applications online and Eduserv will be working with them until March 2012.
  
  Details of the service including terms and conditions and service-level agreements are available now including pricing.
   
• A brokerage service to assist institutions with buying data centre and cloud services.
  Janet Brokerage is a trusted, independent broker working with research and education institutions to help procure cloud computing, data centre and other services such as high speed computing.  The brokerage will keep institutions informed about the best services available.
   
  Some institutions are moving towards a completely out-sourced solution whilst others wish to continue to run their systems in co-location data centres, but would welcome support in procurement. Janet Brokerage have already secured two framework deals to suit either approach:
   
  • Co-Location Service Framework: A single supplier driven by price.
     
  • Co-Location and Data Centre Service Framework: Aimed at organisations wanting to start down the road of managed service and fundamentally shift to outsourced provision.
     

By February 2012 the Brokerage will establish trusted supply relationships with a range of data centre and cloud service suppliers and be able to share service descriptions and risk information so that institutions can make well informed purchasing decisions.

• Cloud Applications
  Four new cloud-based tools will assist researchers by helping them to manage data more effectively:
   
• Virtual Infrastructure with Database as a Service (ViDasS)
  Based at the University of Oxford, VIDaaS is developing software that will enable researchers across all academic disciplines to build, edit, search and share databases online; one recent archaeology project estimated that they could significantly reduce the staff time spent editing their existing database by using the new system, and save as much as 37% on infrastructure costs.
   
• Biomedical Research Infrastructure Software Service kit (BRISSkit)
  Developed by Leicester University, BRISSkit provides support for joint NHS and University research teams working with tissue samples and anonymised patient data.
   
• Smart Research Framework (SRF)
  Developed at Southampton, this service will provide cloud based electronic laboratory data notebooks for data management and collaborations tools, supporting and exploiting easy to use semantics.
   
• Dataflow
  Developed by Oxford, Dataflow provides an integrated set of tools to manage data within projects and then to store it for the longer term by simplifying the set up of Sword compliant data repositories and the submission of data to them.
   

In addition to these developments the JISC-funded Digital Curation Centre is working in depth with selected institutions to develop skills and capacity for research data management services. These may include use of one or more of the applications above in local, private or public clouds. As a result, greater visibility of research data will maximise returns on investment in research by encouraging and enabling re-use of data, enhancing the reputations of scholars and their institutions. It will also help to meet the needs and expectations of both funders and the wider public for transparency, responsibility and collaboration in research.
 

Shared Services for Administration Activities: 

• Digital Academic Records Exchange (DARE)
  Project DARE will deliver a shared service system for the secure online delivery of degree certificates, transcripts, Higher Education Achievement Reports and other student data and documents via the Digitary secure document repository system. The service can be used by different institutions using different backend student records systems and will save them time and money by replacing the manual  issue of paper documents with automated processes. This service will be available from the end of March 2012
     
• Systems and Services Procurement Support  (SSPS)
  This project has established a small, specialist team within JISC Advance to support institutions in procuring and implementing administrative applications, systems and services. With the aim of achieving significant improvements to back office processes and the student experience. At present, the team are working with Project Dare participants to connect their student record systems to the Digitary application. They are also working with Graduate Prospects to automate a service whereby potential employers can validate an applicant’s claimed qualifications on line.
     
• Research Management and Administration System (RMAS)
  This project will procure and develop a modular framework that will allow institutions to choose the elements they need (“plug-and-play”) whilst still retaining the benefits of an integrated research administration and management system. UK HEI will be able to use the Procurement Framework element of the project by the end of February 2012. The framework will offer research institutions an easy and quick route by which to procure a research administration and management system.
       
• Knowledge Base +
  Knowledge Base + is a shared UK academic knowledge base service. The database will cover all ‘subscribed resources’ from a higher education perspective. That includes publication information, holdings and rights, subscription management, organisations, licences and evidence such as usage statistics across all UK academic libraries.
   
  The service will save time and money as ensuring data is accurate is a major overhead for libraries. Knowledge Base+ will enable libraries to reallocate their scarce resources from costly back office functions to focus on services for students and researchers.
   
  This project is due to complete by August 2012 and is managed by JISC Collections.

We will update you with more details about the programme and services you can use during February and March 2012.