Hosting service for colleges

IS Oxford’s fully-managed hosting service will free you and your IT team from many of the administrative hassles of managing a dedicated library network.

College IT departments are invariably under pressure from many quarters and often the learning resource centre is not seen as a priority. IS Oxford’s fully managed hosting service is the ideal solution, as IT departments can transfer responsibility for running the system directly to our expert team. We are best placed to ensure that systems are running optimally, with regular and robust backup routines and patches and upgrades applied on a schedule convenient to library staff, who deal directly with our support team on all matters related to Heritage Cirqa. This direct access to support and our ability to access your hosted system immediately, without overseeing administration from your IT department, ensures that problems are resolved quickly. Many issues can be resolved without local staff even needing to attend to the system!

Leave the maintenance of the system to us and free up valuable time so you can concentrate on enhancing your service and looking after the needs of your users.

Here are some features and benefits of a hosted system:

• Heritage Cirqa is installed on its own, dedicated, virtual server by our team of experts. So no competing for memory or space with other systems, which helps ensure consistent performance.

• We guarantee 99% server uptime and a maximum of 3 working hours of unscheduled downtime per year. That will almost certainly represent far less downtime than running on an institutional system.

• Hosted systems are supported by a sophisticated backup facility, including off-site backup, 256 AES encryption and automated failure notification. You don’t need to worry whether a backup has run properly again, nor even to remember it needs to happen! Rest easy that multiple backups can be referenced should they be required.

• Hosted systems are continuously monitored for issues, which are often identified and fixed before customers even know there is a problem. A problem spotted earlier casuses less damage and avoids lengthy investigation and time fixing things.

• All patches and upgrades are applied at pre-arranged times convenient to you. These can happen out of hours or at a point in the diary when you have time to learn about and exploit the new features and functions it contains.

• Small fixes and configurations can be undertaken on request directly on your system without you needing to be present. Another reason why you can get on with the important parts of your job rather than administering a system.

• Your data is stored in a secure datacentre here in the UK, with a very high level of protection. Rest assured that this level of protection is probably higher than that which could be provided by your own institution.

A hosted Heritage Cirqa system is like having a dedicated Systems Librarian; an additional pair of technical eyes and hands and a trustworthy colleague to turn to at a fraction of the cost of a salary.