Eduserv News

OpenAthens Extends Federation Support

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Read the full story at: http://www.eduserv.org.uk

Shibboleth 1.3 End of Life

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Read the full story at: http://www.eduserv.org.uk

NHS Great Yarmouth and Waveney awarded for support of long-term conditions

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NHS Great Yarmouth and Waveney (NHS GY&W) has won an award for its use of technology in tackling the issue of supporting long-term conditions.

NHS GY&W's long-term conditions website, developed by Eduserv, won an award from the East of England Practice Based Commissioning (PBC) Service for ‘The most innovative PBC collaborative project.’

As budgets are being reviewed and targets need to be maintained, encouraging self management of long-term conditions is recognised nationally and regionally as an issue to help reduce waiting times and hospital visits.

NHS GY&W wanted to support people in managing their own conditions. It worked with Eduserv to develop a website dedicated to the 100,000 people living in Great Yarmouth and Waveney with at least one long-term condition. The website offers online advice from local GPs and includes interactive forums for people suffering from similar conditions to share their experiences and learn how to manage their conditions.

Julian Mitchell, Eduserv Public Sector Manager, said: “We worked very closely with NHS GY&W to understand their challenge and develop an interactive site that would really benefit people living with long-term conditions. Within the first 7 months of launch the site received 6,242 unique visits and 24.22% of visitors returned to use the site regularly.”

Eduserv and NHS Great Yarmouth and Waveney discussed the NHS GY&W case study in their presentation at Smart Healthcare Live.

A copy of the case study is also available in the case studies section of our website.

Eduserv e-book survey

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At Eduserv, we have negotiated a number of Chest Agreements for e-books with Emerald, Springer, IEEE, and other suppliers. As we continue to fulfil our charitable mission of working on behalf of universities and colleges to bring savings to the community, we’ve created a short and simple survey to help inform future negotiations for e-books:

Eduserv e-book survey

Three areas of e-books are covered in the survey:

current use and future plans
budget considerations
purchasing decisions

There are sixteen questions and the survey should not take more than fifteen minutes to complete, but you can leave the survey and resume it later if you come back to the same computer and use the same browser. If you do not know the answer to a question or are unable to make a reasonable estimate, then please simply move on to the next question.

Your help in the completion of the survey will benefit the whole academic community as the results feed into our negotiations and ideas of how best to serve universities and colleges. We will also make a summary of the findings publicly available on the Eduserv website.

If you have any questions about the survey, please contact Nicola Garwood (01225 470536 or nicola.garwood@eduserv.org.uk).

The survey will close on Friday, 2 July.

Eduserv donates £1,000 to the e-Learning Foundation

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We have donated £1,000 to the e-Learning Foundation as an appreciation of the high response to our customer satisfaction surveys.

Between November 2009 and April 2010, we carried out a series of customer satisfaction surveys covering all aspects of our products and services. We were very pleased to receive over 650 responses and would like to thank all those who participated.

Improved online health services for Hammersmith and Fulham

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We worked with NHS Hammersmith and Fulham (NHSHF) to redevelop its website (www.hf-pct.nhs.uk). The new site makes it easier to find information and provides more online services for residents.

NHSHF’s previous website was designed and developed in-house more than four years ago. Tom Stevenson, NHSHF Head of Communications, explained: “We had to rely on one person in the team who had the IT skills needed to update the content. If they were away or busy updates had to wait.”

“The content of the site was very static and it was hard for people to find what they were looking for. We needed a site that was simple for users to navigate and could be easily managed by non-technical staff.”

We developed the site using the Sitecore Content Management System (CMS).

The features implemented on the site include:

Local service finder
Rate this page
News carousel
Drop down navigation and improved search
Text only (AAA) option for screen readers

The features provide benefits to NHSHF staff and website users. It is easier for residents to find information about local services, including the distance of each service from their address.

NHSHF can also make sure the content and services provided meet the needs of website users with information gathered from the ‘rate this page’ feature.

Tom concluded: “Eduserv delivered a site that not only met, but exceeded, our expectations. The site looks a lot more up-to-date, is easier to use and more useful for residents.

"It has also made a huge change to the way the site is managed within our team. Content can easily be updated by non-technical communications staff instead of having to rely on a single developer.”

NHSHF will work with Eduserv to continue to improve the site and deliver more features to benefit residents with a second phase of development. The second phase is expected to be delivered later in 2010.

New functions being considered for phase two include:

An interactive community forum for local residents living with long term conditions
Pulling in more data from NHS choices to provide residents with statistics and ratings of local services
An extranet for GPs to share information and discuss local issues
Templates for GP websites to enable non-technical content management and potentially features such as online appointment booking and prescription management
Text-to-speech software to provide an audio version of the website
Implementation of the Sitecore Online Marketing Suite to personalise the website based on user habits and provide valuable user behaviour information
E-newsletter module to provide simple and accurate contact management and information distribution.

Presentation on cost and efficiency savings from virtualised hosting

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Read the full story at: http://www.eduserv.org.uk

Education thought leadership paper features OpenAthens LA

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Bath Spa University's implementation of OpenAthens LA has been featured in a thought leadership paper from Intellect, the association which represents software and IT organisations to government and the media.

'Driving a step change in productivity and efficiency in the education system' has been produced by Intellect's Education Group, whose members provide 21st century technology to schools, universities, colleges, national bodies and local authorities.

The paper recognises that there have been significant technology advances in the education sector over the last decade. However, it sets out the case and a vision for fully capitalising on the benefits of ICT through deeper embedding in the future and giving teachers, students and the confidence to use the available tools and understand of the potential benefits.

Eduserv and Bath Spa University are featured alongside Intel, Microsoft, Oracle and Logica in a series of case studies that showcase innovative technology projects across the education sector.

The paper also includes key investment questions that institutions should ask before committing to new technology projects.

To launch the paper, there will be a panel debate in central London on 14 April 2010.

For more information and to download a copy, visit the Intellect website.

Eduserv partners with InferMed for new NHS Direct site

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Eduserv is part of a consortium of leading IT and health service providers that will be working on improving the NHS Direct website this summer.

Using Sitecore’s Content Management System, our team of developers will be building a new website to support the online self help guides and assessment tools provided by health software specialist InferMed.

NHS Direct aims to provide people with expert health advice, information and reassurance to care for themselves at home or access appropriate healthcare using world class web and telephone services. The site currently receives around 1.5 million visits a month.

The project will provide a new platform for service delivery, making it faster and easier for users to access information and make choices about how they contact NHS Direct.

New online assessment tools will be available in June 2010 with further tools added throughout the remaining year.

Plans for future development include providing access to services via multiple channels, such as mobile devices, iPTV and games consoles.

www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk
www.sitecore.net
www.infermed.com

Announcing the Eduserv Symposium 2010: The Mobile University

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Registration is now open for Eduserv's sixth annual symposium, which focuses this year on The Mobile University.

The Symposium takes place on Thursday 13 May in central London.

A panel of expert speakers from inside and outside the education space will provide a wide range of perspectives on how mobile technology will impact on how higher education is delivered in the future, including:

the student experience
teaching and learning
research
computing service provision
libraries
value for money

Registration for the event is free and includes an invitation to the drinks reception.

For more information and to register, please visit Eduserv Symposium 2010.

Bath Spa University chooses OpenAthens LA 2.0

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Read the full story at: http://www.eduserv.org.uk

Canterbury Christ Church University wins Award for Excellence

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The annual UCISA Higher Education Award for Excellence, sponsored by Eduserv, has been won this year by Canterbury Christ Churst University for its innovative iBorrow scheme.

The Award aims to recognise and highlight excellence and best practice from UCISA members within the UK higher and further education sectors. The winning institution receives a price of £5,000.

The iBorrow scheme enables users of the university's new Library and Student Services Centre to borrow a notebook computer as easily as picking a book from a shelf. The thin-client notebooks have location-aware technology and enable students to access a full range of software and learning resources. The location information, combined with wirelessly received data on students' use of electronic resources, provides the university with valuable insight on usage, which will help inform the design of new learning spaces.

Dr Keith Gwilym, Pro-Vice Chancellor (Learning & Quality) at Canterbury Christ Church University said:

"[The] University is delighted to have won this year's UCISA award for excellence. The iBorrow project has been a great success for the University and winning this award is a reflection of the innovation and hard work put in by the project team."

Christine Sexton, Chair of UCISA, who also chaired the judging panel, adds:

“The project clearly meets a business need by providing access to laptop technology to a university population where laptop ownership is not common.”

Stephen Butcher, Eduserv's Chief Executive, comments:

"The consideration of staff time as an important cost to be addressed helped make the case for a project that is already realising benefits."

Find out more about the UCISA Awards for Excellence.

Visit the iBorrow scheme website.

Register now for OpenAthens Seminars

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Read the full story at: http://www.eduserv.org.uk

Eduserv negotiates agreement for Camtasia Studio for HE & FE

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Eduserv has negotiated a special deal on the popular screen recording software, Camtasia Studio, on behalf of universities and colleges in the UK and Ireland.

Negotiations with software creators TechSmith began at the Educause conference in Seattle in October 2007, after Eduserv received requests from a number of universities and colleges for a Chest Agreement for the resource via our Wishlists.

Eduserv has been negotiating preferential licence terms for the academic community on software and information resources since 1988, with 60 Chest Agreements currently in place saving universities and colleges £28m per annum.

This new agreement for Camtasia Studio is the only one of its kind in the world. Institutions will save one-sixth of the price of a perpetual licence for the software. Institutions will make substantial savings over the three years of the subscription agreement whether they currently have Camtasia licences or not.

The Agreement runs from 1 January 2010 to 31 December 2012 and institutions can sign up for three-years at any point during that time. There is a minimum order of 100 subscription licences with larger quantities receiving greater discounts. The software is available through a choice of four resellers.

Howard Moody, Business Development Manager in Eduserv’s Licence Negotiation team, said: “I am delighted to have been able to secure this popular product for universities and colleges. It has become a useful tool for lecturers to record their teaching sessions and put them to such uses as distance learning.”

Full details of the Agreement, including ordering information, can be found at www.eduserv.org.uk/camtasia.

Final report on use of SharePoint among UK HEIs now available

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The findings of an Eduserv-funded study into the use of Microsoft SharePoint in UK Higher Education Institutions are now available in a final report.

Eduserv funded the project, lead by Professor Julie McLeod of Northumbria University, in order to improve HEIs' own understanding of the level and nature of uptake amongst their peers. It will also inform Eduserv's own understanding of the level of interest, to help us deliver appropriate services to the education community.

Over 80 HEIs took part in the study via telephone interviews, online surveys and community consultations. An event hosted by Eduserv, 'Use of Microsoft SharePoint in UK HIgher Education Institutions' also attracted over 100 people. Presentations from the event are available online.

For more information, including key findings, please visit the project website.

Eduserv and UCISA sign Memorandum of Understanding

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Eduserv and the Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association (UCISA) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to work together to maximise the benefit they deliver to universities and colleges.

The memorandum details the roles and commitments from both organisations for the next three years. The organisations will share their knowledge, skills and experience to help universities and colleges benefit from efficient IT including:

Access and identity management
Licensing of software
Content management services
Hosting and associated services
Dissemination of good practice.

Commitments agreed in the memorandum include:

Eduserv sponsoring the UCISA Good Practice Awards for the next three years
Regular meetings with key suppliers including Adobe, Microsoft and Oracle
Sharing knowledge through joint committee and group meetings.

The Memorandum was signed on Thursday 14 January by Peter Tinson, Executive Secretary of UCISA, and Stephen Butcher, Eduserv Chief Executive.

Download Memorandum of Understanding [PDF]

Chest Agreements save the academic community £29m a year

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Read the full story at: http://www.eduserv.org.uk

Entries invited for UCISA 2009 Award for Excellence

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Entries are now invited for the Award for Excellence, sponsored by Eduserv, which aims to recognise and highlight levels of excellence and best practice amongst UCISA members within UK higher and further education.

We are looking to recognise IT practice or projects which bring significant new or wider benefits to learners, or researchers, or the institutions that serve them, in a cost-effective way.

The Award will be presented at the UCISA Management Conference in Harrogate in March 2010, and the winning submission will be invited to give one of the Institutional Showcase presentations at the Conference. The winning institution will also receive £5,000.

Previous winners include the University of Glamorgan, Sheffield Hallam University and Brunel University.

Further details, including guidance on how to enter, is available at the UCISA website http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/members/awards/excellence.aspx

Research into machine readable licences

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Read the full story at: http://www.eduserv.org.uk

Introducing OpenAthens LA 2.0

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OpenAthens LA 2.0 is a new, standards-compliant software platform that uses an organisation's user directory to provide single sign-on access to web resources using a variety of protocols such as Shibboleth and Athens.

It has been developed specifically for universities and colleges in the UK Access Management Federation that want to adopt local authentication whilst minimising the impact on busy internal IT departments.

Eduserv has been providing access and identity management services to the academic sector since 1994. OpenAthens LA 2.0 builds on this strong heritage to include open standards and support for new and emerging access management technologies.

Find out more about OpenAthens LA 2.0 and how you can make local authentication easier for federated access.

OpenAthens LA 2.0 enables single sign-on to Google Apps

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OpenAthens LA 2.0, a single-sign on product developed for UK universities and colleges, now includes support for Google Apps - the search giant's suite of hosted enterprise tools. This will enable institutions to allow their staff and students to use services such as Gmail and Google Docs with their existing logins.

Managing digital identities and access rights is a key challenge facing many academic institutions. Traditionally this has been to provide access to academic journals and other learning resources, but increasingly to managed online services such as virtual learning environments and online collaboration tools.

OpenAthens LA 2.0, one of Eduserv’s suite of access and identity management services, enables organisations - primarily in higher and further education - to use existing student and staff accounts to log in to multiple external and internal online resources.

Organisations can now use OpenAthens LA 2.0 to log in to Google Apps, which provides advert-free, domain-based versions of the popular Gmail, Calendar and Google Docs applications.

OpenAthens customers can achieve this integration very easily with just a few clicks in the web-based OpenAthens LA 2.0 administration console (right).

David Orrell, Senior Access and Identity Management Architect at Eduserv, says:

“With a growing number of organisations turning to Google and Microsoft for outsourced services such as email, calendars and online document collaboration, it’s vital that students can use their existing logins to access these services.”

OpenAthens LA 2.0 is released on 23 November 2009.

Find out more about our Access and Identity Management services.

BIS takes action on Government transformation agenda

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The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has signed a contract for Eduserv to develop and host its website.

The deal enables BIS to meet one of the key objectives of the government's service transformation agenda - to rationalise the number of partner websites.

BIS partners, including government agencies, non-departmental public bodies and their goverment departments that share a Minister with BIS, can migrate their content to the BIS website or maintain a sub-site of BIS with their own identity using shared hosting and content management services at no additional annual service cost.

The service includes:

Sitecore Content Management System
Fully managed hosting of BIS and partner websites on Eduserv’s Government Ready Platform
Secure remote access
Business Continuity
25% year-on-year growth of the BIS site.

Eduserv’s Government Ready Platform is a shared virtual hosting platform developed uniquely for government organisations. It enables sites to be deployed quickly and will incur no annual service charges for BIS partners.

The service is scheduled to go live in March 2010.

Julian Mitchell, Public Sector Manager at Eduserv, said:

“The contract is a great opportunity for BIS and its partners to efficiently rationalise their websites. We are actively supporting the government’s service transformation and greening ICT agendas through our hosting and development services.

“The Government Ready Platform was used to host the BIS interim website. It is more resilient, better value and quicker to deploy than standard hosting platforms.”

Paul Reynolds, BIS ICT Deputy Director, said:

“The pricing model of the contract means we can work with our partners to rationalise and host their websites for a small set-up cost and no annual service charges. This will be very cost effective in the long run as we work to meet the objectives of the government’s service transformation agenda.

“We are currently hosting the interim BIS site with Eduserv and the new site, which is fully resilient with business continuity, should push reliability and availability to new levels. This contract will provide many additional benefits to us and our partners including this highly resilient, low cost hosting for our partners.”

http://www.bis.gov.uk/

Eduserv provides hosting support for WriteToReply

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Eduserv is to provide two years' funding to support the hosting of WriteToReply, a community platform that was set up in February 2009 to enable people to re-publish a report, consultation or think piece for comment and discussion.

Texts are reproduced on the site and broken down into respective sections for easier reading and commenting. Users can also re-publish a document on their own sites using the guidelines available from the site's wiki.

Eduserv's support of the project begins with a 6 month upgrade from the site's current hosting service, which will double their capacity.

Andy Powell comments:

"It strikes me that Write to Reply has already demonstrated its value in various fields, notably in the areas of education and government policy, and I'm sure it will continue to do so. It's one of those ideas that is rather simple and obvious in hindsight, yet very powerful in practice - give people a public space in which they can make comments on important documents and make it social enough that commenting feels more like having a conversation than simply annotating a text."

For more information about the agreement, read the eFoundations and WriteToReply blog posts on the subject.

Adding personalisation to the JISC website

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The JISC carried out extensive research into the needs of its website users, and wanted to provide an improved user experience with a look and feel that was modern and professional.

We developed a website (www.jisc.ac.uk) that provided users with improved searches and personalisation features.

Access to information was made easier by enabling editors to tag/associate content with topics, and allowing users to navigate using these topics - helping to create a logical and clear user experience.

The new site also offers personalisation facilities for users to customise their homepage with the information that is important to them.

An enhanced search facility has also improved the ability for users to find the information they need. Users can search not only the JISC website but also across their services’ independent websites all with one click.

Chris Walker, Eduserv’s Web Development Manager, said: “One of the key success factors of this project was the adoption of an Agile approach. We had close contact with the JISC and reviewed progress with them on a two weekly Sprint cycle, giving us the added flexibility to meet their needs. We allowed them to progress and evolve their ideas through the course of the development and not stick rigidly to a predefined specification. This ensured a solution was delivered that met their evolving business needs.”

Find out more about Eduserv's web development services.

Philips Electronics chooses single sign-on

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More than 400 international organisations are now using Eduserv’s access and identity management products and services (Athens and OpenAthens) to securely access online research information.

One of the latest is Philips Electronics, a multi-national company that employs over 121,000 people in over 60 countries. It has one of the world’s largest corporate research organisations; employing more than 1,800 professionals.

Philips wanted a single-sign-on system based on their existing Microsoft Active Directory to provide secure access to their journals and resources. This would also allow them to phase out their own proxy server.

Our Athens service was able to link to their existing Active Directory, taking researchers straight to individual journals and providing statistics showing access rates to each resource by division. This allowed Philips to charge their research divisions in Holland, England, India and China based on access to their resources.

Find out more about Eduserv's access and identity management services.

Government reaps the benefits of virtualised hosting

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A growing number of organisations are joining our Government Ready Platform to benefit from the added value it provides. It is a shared virtualised hosting environment that has been built specifically for government organisations.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) have already signed up to the Government Ready Platform.

The shared platform provides organisations with benefits such as replicas of the live site available for development and testing, hot standby remote-site disaster recovery, and low-cost virtual licences for software and operating systems.

As well as providing organisations greater value for money and reducing their carbon emissions, the VM based platform also benefits from being more resilient than a physical hosting service, and is designed for zero planned down time. It is also highly scalable with the option to significantly increase capacity at anytime.

When the government departments BERR and DIUS merged to form BIS they needed a hosting solution that could be flexible to accommodate both organisations’ data as well as ensure minimum downtime. The Government Ready Platform provided them with a solution that both organisations could trust and were happy with. The flexibility of the platform meant their website was designed, developed and live within two days.

Will Callaghan, Corporate Web Manager for BIS, added: “We chose to host the BIS site with Eduserv because they already hosted the former DIUS corporate website and are consistently first rate. Since launch, the hosting for the new BIS site has been the most reliable we have used with the greatest resilience and uptime.”

Eduserv Talks Science with the Science Museum

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www.talkscience.org.uk is a new website we have developed for the National Science Museum. The site provides science teachers with information and resources about discussion based learning. And a place where teachers can share best practice and pool resource for teaching tools and lesson planning.

We built the site using Community Server 2008 which provides online community features such as forums, blogs, wikis, media galleries and Microsoft SharePoint to share and discuss documents.

The tools implemented provide an interactive site that has very user driven content. As well as the information provided by the Science Museum people can also upload their own videos of teaching techniques, discuss the subjects that matter to them and give feedback on the teaching methods suggested.

Dan Evans, Web Manager for National Science Museum, said: “The site is a success because it provides expert information and advice but also it is an online community where people with similar interests can share and discuss their information. We believe Eduserv has delivered a site that will not only be fun and useful for science teachers it will also provide vital information to engage students.”

It's time to reduce your carbon footprint

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In April 2010 the government will introduce Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), the UK’s new carbon emissions trading scheme. The scheme will be compulsory for over 20,000 large, private and public sector, organisations. We have designed our data centre to reduce organisations’ carbon emissions and help you to meet your CRC targets.

On average a data centre will account for around 20 percent of an organisation’s IT carbon emissions. (Source: Industry Direct LTD Analyst Data)

We have designed our Swindon Data Centre using the very latest technology, such as free cooling, cold-aisle containment and efficient hardware, to reduce your energy consumption. Moving to virtualised environments can also help you reduce carbon emissions and energy costs by up to 39%. (Source APC trade off tools 2009)

Many organisations, including the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), are already taking advantage of the secure, resilient and efficient hosting we provide – helping to make sure they are ready to meet their carbon emissions targets.

Visit the following websites to learn more about the government’s CRC scheme and how to reduce your organisation’s IT energy consumption:

www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/what_we_do/lc_uk/crc/crc.aspx

www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/uk/business/crc/index.htm

www.carbonreductioncommitment.info

For more information about our data centre visit www.eduserv.org.uk/datacentre

Websites built by Eduserv win in Sitecore’s UK Site of the Year awards

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Two websites that Eduserv has developed for clients have been recognised as category winners in the Sitecore UK Site of the Year awards.

The Victim Support website (www.victimsupport.org.uk) won Best Government, Healthcare & Not-for-Profit Site and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) website (www.jisc.ac.uk) won Best Education, Media and Advertising Site.

Sitecore’s Site of the Year contest recognises customers who have taken advantage of their content management technology to develop the most outstanding websites. The contest is divided into four regions, including International, Denmark, UK, and North America.

This year’s entries were judged within six categories: Manufacturing, Automotive and Technology, Professional, Business and Personal Services, Retail, Wholesale and Consumer Goods, Entertainment, Travel, Tourism and Leisure, Media, Education and Advertising, Government, Healthcare and Not-for-profit.

Each nomination was judged by a panel of Sitecore specialists on the following attributes:

Use of Sitecore as a technology platform
Integration of Sitecore to other software/technologies
Design implementation
Branding
Results delivered

Eduserv has been developing websites for our customers using the Sitecore CMS since 2004, when we became Sitecore’s first UK partner.

We selected the CMS because of its high level of flexibility, which means websites can be tailored exactly to meet customers’ needs and budget.

We have built sites for large public sector organisations including the Department for Schools, Children and Industry, the DVLA and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Web Development Manager Chris Walker said, “It’s rewarding to see the hard work of our web developers being recognised, as well as the successful partnership between Eduserv, our customers and our design partners in creating these vibrant and engaging sites. We work very closely with our customers to gain a deep understanding of their needs, so that we can build bespoke sites that help meet their objectives.”

“Eduserv has built highly successful sites for Victim Support and JISC that solve the difficult business and marketing challenges facing organisations today,” said Laust Sondergaard, Chairman, Sitecore UK. Eduserv has demonstrated excellence in developing sites with an engaging design, offering dynamic features including personalisation, enhanced site search and meeting accessibility requirements. We are proud to partner with Eduserv, and to recognise their work.”

Find out more about our Web Solutions.

Literature review on uptake and use of SharePoint by HEIs is now available

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Read the full story at: http://www.eduserv.org.uk