Areas of interest

Our work focuses on the key areas that help inform the development of new and existing services and that increase understanding about the effective use of ICT within the public sector, health and academic communities. Our interests currently include:

Access and Identity Management

This work informs future developments to our OpenAthens suite of tools and services (for example, through the use of standards such as OpenID and OAuth) and helps to foster effective access management federations (notably the UK Access Management Federation for Education and Research) within the communities we serve.

Cloud Hosting

We expect to see a growing role for cloud-based approaches, both in the solutions we offer and in the tools we use in-house. This area of activity helps to underpin that transition.

Licence Negotiation

Our work in this area will help our Licence Negotiation team to evolve new services in line with the changing environment (e.g. software as a service and machine readable licences).

Mobile

All Eduserv's services are delivered within a landscape that is undergoing great change, particularly around the development of mobile computing (laptops, smart phones and other devices). Our activities in this area are intended to help both us and the communities we serve understand the nature of that change and its implications on research, learning, healthcare provision, government engagement and cultural heritage.

Open Data

The current drive for more open access to publicly-funded data in the UK public sector (and beyond) highlights another ongoing change in the landscape in which our services have to operate. Our research in this area will inform the development of our web-hosting and content management services and will contribute to standards, understanding and wider uptake in this area.

Research Services

We expect our new data centre facilities to be of value to researchers in the academic community. Our research in this area will develop new Eduserv services targeted at this community.