Enables rapid development of cost-effective, scalable Cloud-based educational solutions
Education IT specialist Oakford Internet Services (OIS) announced today that the latest version of their highly successful and acclaimed CloudSchool platform will be based on the latest edition of Apache® CloudStack®.
“Within the UK education sector, budgets are always decreasing whilst the demand on the schools IT infrastructure and supporting applications are increasing,” said Peregrine Sharples, Managing Director of OIS. “The traditional onsite IT infrastructure model simply does not scale alongside these shrinking budgets.”
To combat this challenge Oakford launched its CloudSchool solution in 2011 that allows educational establishments across the UK to host their IT infrastructure offsite in secure, ISO27001 certified, data centers. The schools benefit from economy of scale, eliminating the high capital costs and overheads of hosting their equipment onsite. This transformation to a cloud model grants them access to a predictable monthly/annual operating cost model coupled with enterprise IT features that would have been previously out of reach. This solution is then supported centrally by Oakford’s professional support team.
Working with ShapeBlue, the CloudStack company, to help finalise the design, all existing CloudSchool customers as well as new installations will be migrated to this new platform once final testing has been completed. Apache CloudStack was selected after an intensive R&D exercise against other cloud management platforms, both Open Source and commercial. Apache CloudStack stood out in part due to its rich feature set but also its simplicity in design and ease of deployment. Oakford required a product that would allow it to hit the ground running without the overhead of an overly complex solution.
“We are delighted that OIS have chosen Apache CloudStack for their CloudSchool platform,” said Giles Sirett, CEO of ShapeBlue. “v4.11 is the latest release of CloudStack and brings a range of new features, many focussed at cloud service providers such as OIS . Their selection of Apache Cloudstack 4.11 is an endorsement of the fact that Cloudstack remains the most stable, easily deployable and scalable IaaS platform available.”
“This exciting development will allow us to onboard customers much more quickly than before with the knowledge that the system scales as we need it to,” added Sharples. “This zero capital and support cost solution has proven popular with schools of all sizes and this development allows us to scale even further.”
About ShapeBlue
ShapeBlue are the largest independent integrator of Apache CloudStack technologies globally and are specialists in the design and implementation of IaaS cloud infrastructures for both private and public cloud implementations. Services include IaaS cloud design, software engineering, CloudStack consulting, and training. The company has a global customer base with offices in London (UK), Mountain View (CA), Bangalore (India), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), and Cape Town (South Africa). For more information, visit https://www.shapeblue.com/ .
About Oakford Internet Services
OIS is the infrastructure and network arm of the highly acclaimed Oakford Technology who provide IT support, consultancy and development to education and commercial customers across the UK. OIS maintains a highly available and scalable network and server infrastructure across three data centres in the UK managed by central teams based in Devizes, Wiltshire. For more information, visit https://oakfordis.com/ .
“Apache”, “CloudStack”, and “Apache CloudStack” are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries.
Oakford Internet Services:
Rhiannon Higgs
+44 (0) 3302 230 230
RHiggs@oakfordis.com
ShapeBlue:
Media Office
+44 (0) 20 3603 0540
info@shapeblue.com
ShapeBlue SA are pleased to announce the extension of their distribution partner agreement for NetApp in South Africa, building out a successful relationship that started in 2014.
