Your decision to invest in Microsoft’s market-leading cloud platform of over 200 services will make web-scale computing easier for your developers and service providers.

However, you may still find it hard to find the time and headspace to focus on delivering your organisation’s digital transformation.

It may be easier to save time by handing responsibility for day-to-day management of your Azure environment to our managed Azure service delivery team.

About the service

Our Managed Azure service allows organisations to procure and use Azure technologies and services, managed and supported by our expertise and experience. We can help you to improve your cloud security posture and manage your cloud spend.

The service is primarily designed to look after the day today management of your VM’s along with any supporting infrastructure such as networking, security and identity management.

Our Managed Azure service is typically bought in conjunction with buying your cloud consumption through us. However, if you have an alternative procurement route you can still buy a managed service from us.

We will create and configure your Azure account(s), including the provision of a hardware MFA to protect the root user. We will provide you with access to an ‘administrator’ user if you require it.

We offer 3 tiers of service level known as Basic, Professional and Enterprise as detailed in table below (these are designed to help you choose the right level of support required):

Choose your level of support

Service featuresBasicProfessionalEnterprise
Support hours08:00 - 18:00 (Mon - Fri)24/7, 365 days a year24/7, 365 days a year
Monitoring of VM's and infrastructure, proactive alerts and reactive support08:00 - 18:00 (Mon - Fri)24/7, 365 days a year24/7, 365 days a year
Security alert monitoring of your infrastructure08:00 - 18:00 (Mon - Fri)24/7, 365 days a year24/7, 365 days a year
Re-active alerts for your public facing web services08:00 - 18:00 (Mon - Fri)24/7, 365 days a year24/7, 365 days a year
Service level agreementIncludedIncludedIncluded
Service onboarding IncludedIncludedIncluded
Vendor escalation IncludedIncludedIncluded
Technical support via ITSM portal IncludedIncludedIncluded
Problem management IncludedIncludedIncluded
Ongoing cost reporting via FinOps IncludedIncludedIncluded
Service reports - monthly IncludedIncludedIncluded
Cloud management platform IncludedIncludedIncluded
Account/relationship managerIncludedIncludedIncluded
Consumption reports (self-service)IncludedIncludedIncluded
Windows and Linux patching and verificationIncludedIncludedIncluded
Service offboarding IncludedIncludedIncluded
Change requests IncludedIncludedIncluded
Anti-malware XIncludedIncluded
Automated power on/off schedulingXIncludedIncluded
Patch reports - monthly XIncludedIncluded
Advanced monitoring of VM's using third party tools XIncludedIncluded
Service review meetings - quarterly XIncludedX
Service review meetings - monthly XXIncluded
Access to AWS/Azure ArchitectsXXIncluded
Health and performance recommendation reports - monthlyXXIncluded
Security review - annualXXIncluded
Augmented FinOps (self-service)XXIncluded
Full lifecycle FinOps (self-service)XXIncluded
Security and compliance advice/reporting (self-service)XXIncluded

Managed services billing portal

Billing features for our core and enhanced service options:

  • Cost monitoring
  • Pre-payment options
  • Management of credits
  • SAML 2 support

Support that meets your needs, whatever your stage of cloud maturity

Make sure your service level agreement is watertight. Procuring through Jisc gives you access to Azure’s strong service level agreement, giving you peace of mind and defining the crucial aspects of the service like responsibility, quality, and availability between Azure and your organisation.

Optimise efficiencies with personalised monthly recommendation reports that help you save money and keep you up to date on cost best practice, reserved instances, EC2 right-sizing, usage best practice and the security of your Azure accounts. You will also get monthly reports on service incidents and patching.

Get expert help and advice whenever you need it. If you need advice, design, or hands-on working with your team, just ask us about additional consultancy support.

Always on

Getting help is simple with managed Azure. Your IT support team needs just one point of contact. It’s us!

We triage calls about service issues via our ITSM web portal and pass them on to Azure if required. Pass your billing, subscription and other issues to us, too.

Read more about our access to your data on Azure (pdf)

Procurement frameworks

Our cloud solutions team can support your procurement processes. For example, we can provide members and customers with Azure products and services through the digital marketplace G-Cloud framework and OCRE framework and by direct award.

Please speak to your relationship manager or contact cloud@jisc.ac.uk for further details.

Case study: providing a robust digital lifeline for people in crisis

Samaritans volunteer helpline

Samaritans provides 24-hour support, so digital transformation was a priority for them to improve business efficiencies and keep pace with the changing behaviours of its service users.

Read how Jisc helped Samaritans with their cloud migration (pdf).

Need help managing payments for our services?

Did you know you our customers can make pre-payments for Jisc cloud products and services ahead of the time they wish to use them, they can then ‘draw down’ against the pre-payment to be applied to Jisc invoices for completed projects involving Jisc products or services.

Our partnership with Azure

As a Cloud Solutions Provider (CSP) with extensive expertise in the Azure platform we can support you through procurement, design, and delivery of Azure with a support wrapper and ongoing full life-cycle management.