EDINA Annual Review: 2011-2012
and maps printed during 2010-2011 was £24.8 million, on top of the imputed value of providing a world-class online mapping service for 108 universities and 40 colleges. We plan to send organisation-specific estimates to each site representative, as this calculation will be an invaluable tool for the subscribing institutions to demonstrate value for money. Subscriptions to databases held in SUNCAT would cost each institution over £4 thousand: SUNCAT obtains the data for all at just under £17 thousand in toto.
Improved technical reliability EDINA infrastructure benefits from synergy with the University of Edinburgh. The University possesses a large scale computing infrastructure and leveraging marginal use of that is cost effective for JISC and our customers. The University and EDINA continue to monitor the comparative cost of external cloud hosting and currently University hosting remains significantly less expensive. EDINA has recently participated in a joint procurement with the University to secure upgraded Storage Area Network (SAN) infrastructure and an updated SAN has now been installed. This will result in significant cost savings and performance improvements and provides a vendor-neutral and long-term storage solution. EDINA also shares backup infrastructure with the University. The current hardware is due to be upgraded or replaced over the coming 18 months.
Capacity as a JISC-funded academic data centre EDINA enables JISC to address sector priorities and support national strategies. Its primary advantages lie in economy of scale and having a critical mass of skill/ talent, utilising a prominent university’s infrastructure and broader support network, yielding cost effective and highly competitive products at marginal cost. Running high demand services against Service Level Agreements with innovation challenges develops well rounded engineering capability and the valuable capacity to transition projects to services, normally a high risk activity. EDINA provides high quality, cost-effective helpdesk, training and support services, and has a reputation for excellent user support, which we seek to improve each year. Various staff members at EDINA are recognised nationally and internationally as experts in their fields and have links with many important organisations. Codevelopment of software as pressure grows on institutions to maintain developers is an important capacity that JISC can offer the community via EDINA. Capacity is required to undertake innovation, knowledge exchange and service enhancements that continue to meet the requirements of the community.
Developing mobile applications for EDINA services
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