Presentation about Jisc's forthcoming app and resource platform, facilitating development and promoting of apps and resource for the HE, FE and Skills Sectors using a Mobile First, Cloud First Approach

1. IWMW 2015
29/07/2015 Integrating with Jisc’s ‘Mobile First-Cloud First’ App and Resource
Platform

2. Outline
»About Jisc
»Jisc Research & Development (R&D)
»Jisc’s Mobile-First, Cloud First App and Resource
Platform

3. Mission
To enable people in higher education,
further education and skills in the UK
to perform at the forefront of
international practice by exploiting
fully the possibilities of modern digital
empowerment, content and
connectivity
Our vision & mission
Vision
To make the UK the most
digitally advanced
education and research
nation in the world

4. What does Jisc do?
Does 4 things…
Providing and developing a
network infrastructure and
related services that meet the
needs of the UK research and
education communities
Supporting the procurement
of digital content for UK
education and research
Our network of national and
regional teams provide local
engagement, advice and
support to help you get the
most out of our service offer
Our R&D work, paid for entirely
by our major funders, identifies
emerging technologies and
develops them around your
particular needs

5. Jisc does 4 things…
Our work in this area includes:
» Security
» Connectivity
» Access and identity
management
» Procurement
» Cloud
» Email
» Internet and IP services
» Telecoms
» Videoconferencing
Our work in this area includes:
» Journals
» e-books
» Maps and geospatial data
» Learning and teaching resources
» Resource discovery
» Film and images
» Repositories
In this area we provide:
» A single point of contact through
a dedicated account manager
» Subject specialists
» Communities of practice and
peer networking
» Local stakeholder for a
» Training
» A range of online and face to
face events (eg Digifest,
Networkshop)
We are currently running 34 R&D
projects including the following
topic areas:
» Collaboration
» Curation and preservation
» Data and analytics
» Digital literacy
» E-learning and VLEs
» Libraries
» Open access
» Research and research data

6. Jisc Research & Development (R&D)

7. The Jisc R&D proposition
The goal is
Delivered by
Facilitated by
Using
Developing new national shared technology services
Collaborating across the sector
Jisc as a national body with a technology focus
Jisc’s co-design innovation process

8. R&D and Jisc service pipeline

9. Jisc’s co-design process

10. Co-design partners
142 ideas considered
24 defined and pitched
5 challenges prioritised
>100 senior stakeholders
prioritised ideas
> 1000 colleagues consulted

11. Co-design challenges
Research at risk (R@R)
Prospect to alumnus (P2A) Learning analytics
Digital learning & capabilitiesImplementing FELTAG
Business intelligence
Hosting platform Hosting platform

12. Mobile First, Cloud First
App and Resource Platform

13. Starting point of our platform…
Summer of Student Innovation

14. Student Summer of Innovation

15. Jisc Summer of Student Innovation
How it works:
» Create – Students make a video to
explain their idea
» Share – Upload their video and
encourage people to vote
» Vote - If they hit the voting target
we will consider it for funding

16. What did we learn?
26/11/2013 Jisc Co-design 16
Great ideas but…
» Difficult route to market
» Huge duplication of effort
» Technical issues e.g. no mobile/modern HTML .ac.uk
authentication service
» Difficult to gain institutions trust
… Feedback from EdTech startup community was similar

17. 26/11/2013 Jisc Co-design
App and Resource hosting platform
The solution:
» Modern hosting platform
» OAuth 2.0 Authentication
» Integration layers
» Community
» Marketplace
» Encourage Mobile First, Cloud First
Development

18. App and Resource Platform.
Overall Architecture

19. What should this look like?
How about modelling on something like Google?

20. Based upon: Google stack
App store and
community
Authentication, authorisation &
consent
First & third party apps
APIs and developer services
Cloud platform and services &
integration

21. Jisc application hosting stack
App store &community
Authentication, authorisation &
consent
First & third party apps
APIs and developer services
Cloud platform and services &
integration
• Analytics
• Business Intelligence
• Data Services
• Open Resources….

22. App and Resource Platform..
Store/Marketplace

23. Jisc application hosting stack
“An app store for Jisc
services and content and
for third party services
that comply with basic Jisc
criteria.The app store will
make educational
technology and content
easy to find and easy to
use for Jisc customers”

24. Jisc app and resource store
User Ratings
Reviews Sharing
Related Content
Graph DB

25. Validation Process
25
Gain trust by auditing:
» Technical
› Hosting, authentication,
resilience, security
» Legal
› Data protection,
» Process
› User support, code
management, SLAs

26. App and Resource Platform..
Authentication

27. Authentication
26/11/2013 Jisc Co-design 27
Typical modern
authentication
flows:

28. App and Resource Platform..
APIs

29. Web x.0
29

30. Google APIs
30

31. Kit Catalogue
26/11/2013 Jisc Co-design 31

32. Reverse Example – Directory of Online Courses
26/11/2013 Jisc Co-design 32

33. Reverse Example – Directory of Online Courses
26/11/2013 Jisc Co-design 33
Current solution…
+ =

34. Reverse Example – Directory of Online Courese
26/11/2013 Jisc Co-design 34
What we want…
+ =XCRI-CAP

35. Reverse Example - Houndly
35
Events, Seminars etc

36. Reverse Example - Houndly
36
Events, Seminars etc

37. Reverse Example - Houndly
26/11/2013 Jisc Co-design 37
Events, Seminars etc

38. RSS – Exhibit A & B
26/11/2013 Jisc Co-design 38
<item>
<title>Meet a Mentor </title>
<type>Other Event</type>
<category>Networking</category>
<description>xxxxx.</description>
<startDate>Wed, 15 Jul 2015 13:30pm
UTC</startDate>
<endDate>Wed, 15 Jul 2015 16:30pm
UTC</endDate>
<startTimestamp>1436967000</startTimestamp
>
<endTimestamp>1436977800</endTimestamp>
<venue>TheGeorge Hotel</venue>
<venueAddress>19 – 21 x Street</venueAddress>
<venuePostcode>XXXXXX</venuePostcode>
<latitude>12.2345</latitude>
<longitude>12.2345</longitude>
<distance>N/A</distance>
</item>
<item>
<title>TheOther Industries</title>
<description>
30 July 2015 - 30 July 2015, . : xxxxxx
</description>
<link>
http://www.html.ac.uk/sections/whats_on/event
s_details.php?event_id=7495
</link>
<pubDate>Thu, 30 Jul 2015 17:15:00
GMT</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="false">
7495@http://www.xxxxxx.ac.uk/sections/whats_
on/</guid>
</item>
Exhibit A Exhibit B

39. Actual event specification…
26/11/2013 Jisc Co-design 39
Model
<item> Elements:
<ev:startdate> ( #PCDATA ) [W3CDTF]
<ev:enddate> ( #PCDATA ) [W3CDTF]
<ev:location> ( #PCDATA )
<ev:organizer> ( #PCDATA )
<ev:type> ( #PCDATA )

40. So what’s the solution?
Community agreed APIs?

41. App and Resource Platform…
Data Hub

42. Onsite Integration
42

43. Shared Data Model
43

44. App and Resource Platform…
Cloud Hosting for Mobile First Development

45. Mobile first?
45
Mobile First
!=
Responsive Design

46. 46
API
Database
Business Logic Messaging
Authentication
n x VMs
Typical Mobile-First App
Third party clientsFirst party clients

47. App development usingVM’s
»Figure out architecture
› Work our resilience approach
› Work out how to scale
»Build and secure servers
»Sysadmin
26/11/2013 Jisc Co-design 47

48. App development using Backend-as-a-Service
48
x-as-a-
Service
API
Database
Business Logic Messaging
Authentication
API
Database
Business Logic Messaging
Authentication
Mobile Client

49. In-house Platform-as-a-service
49
Database-
as-a-service
Backend-
as-a-service
Websites-as-
a-service Auto-scaling
Auto-
patching
Auto-backup
Auto-update

50. Websites-as-a-service: Azure Website
26/11/2013 Jisc Co-design 50
• Supports .NET, Java, PHP, Node.js, Python
• Built-in auto-scale and Load Balancing
• Free site suitable for test deployments
• High Availability with Auto-Patching
• Continuous Deployment with Git,TFS, GitHub

51. App development using Backend-as-a-Service
51
BaaS Providers

52. Backend-as-a-service: Azure Mobile Services
52
• iOS, Android, Windows, HTML5
• Push Notifications
• Social Integration w/ Facebook,Twitter, Google, AzureActive
Directory
• Simple Data Storage APIs
• Custom APIs in C# or JavaScript (Node.js)
• Easy to Scale (Drag a slider!)

53. Database-as-a-service: SQL Azure and MongoLabs
26/11/2013 Jisc Co-design 53
• 14 day point in time restore (Azure
SQL)/ Automated Backup
(Mongolab)
• Optional geo-replication
• 3 Local replicas/Multi-zone failover
• No need for patching etc.
• Up and running in minutes!

54. Takeaways….

55. Takeaways
26/11/2013 Jisc Co-design 55
• Jisc is a now a service provider!
• Look out for ourAPI’s over the next few months
• Create XCRI-CAP feeds!
• Can we create a common events API?
• and how can we create communityAPIs?
• Try x-as-a-service cloud

56. Find out more…
MichaelWebb
Director ofTechnology andAnalytics
michael.webb@jisc.ac.uk
One Castlepark Tower Hill Bristol BS2 0JA
T 020 3697 5800
@michaeldwebb www.slideshare.net/mwebbjisc/