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Service announcements

Saving money on ExpressRoute

(This blog post was originally written by James Blessing as part of Jisc’s Shaping the Future of Janet blog). A number of organisations connected to Janet use ExpressRoute to create a dedicated connection from their campus to the Microsoft Azure Platform, others choose to use the multiple high capacity peerings that we have with Microsoft […]

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Cloud advice

ADFS – Moving away from federated 365 authentication

Single sign-on (SSO) plays a key part in providing a secure authentication solution. However, the architecture and authentication flow of these solutions are paramount in ensuring that your identity broker retains its availability and integrity. IAM makes up a core component of the NCSC Cloud Security Principles. Therefore, when implemented it is important that the […]

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Service announcements

The OCRE Cloud Framework

A more efficient way to buy cloud for education and research. The OCRE Cloud Framework is a new way to buy cloud for universities, colleges and other research organisations. The framework is OJEU-compliant and offers an easy procurement route for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and associated Software as a […]

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Cloud advice

Infrastructure as Code – assessing the options

Introduction Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a key element to successful cloud adoption. Using IaC, organisations create infrastructure that is both re-usable and reproducible. This consistency helps ensure that applications built in development environments will function the same way in near-identical production environments. Changes can (should!) be planned and controlled through coding best practices such as version […]

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Case studies

Jisc consultancy helps ucisa achieve fully portable cloud IT

Jisc’s cloud solutions team worked to migrate ucisa’s systems to Microsoft’s public cloud infrastructure, using both Azure and Office 365. The migration meant that ucisa now uses public cloud infrastructure for email, membership application, accountancy and web domain services. To see more details please review our ucisa case study

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Service announcements

Jisc Cloud Solutions G-Cloud 12 services

The twelfth iteration of the Crown Commercial Services (CCS) digital marketplace G-Cloud framework starts on Monday 28th September 2020. Jisc has listed its digital products and services on the G-Cloud framework to provide a route to purchase for those organizations that wish to use it. The G-Cloud framework is an agreement between the UK government […]

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News

Project Bicep – beyond ARM templates 

One of the key concepts and advantages of public cloud hosting is the use of Infrastructure as Code (IaC). IaC allows repeatable results and faster, simpler automation and orchestration. These can drastically reduce the time to deploy resources and provide a built-in level of quality, change control and versioning. However, a certain amount of time […]

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Cloud advice

Improving PaaS consumption with Azure Private Link

In my opinion, one of the most significant enablers for consumption of Platform as a Service (PaaS) in Azure has been the launch of Azure Private Link capability. For years, the concept, and successful implementation, of a private network has been a cornerstone of IT security. This is still true, even with an ‘assume breach’ […]

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News

Immersive Reader – baby steps towards using the cloud and AI to support reading

Microsoft have recently announced the general availability of Immersive Reader, one of the Azure Cognitive Services. Immersive Reader is probably more applicable to schools and, maybe, FE than to universities but is interesting nonetheless: Empowering remote learning with Azure Cognitive Services https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/empowering-remote-lea…. Immersive Reader is an Azure Cognitive Service within the Azure AI platform that […]

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Cloud advice

Powering productivity at home with desktops in the cloud

Jisc members and customers are under increasing pressure to deliver great user experiences to those who are working or studying remotely. Productivity suites have become an established means of delivering several applications and services remotely, across a range of platforms and devices. Email, calendars and collaboration tools, for example. But with the disruption caused by […]