Higher Education and Research

How do we square a circle? For example, how can we support an expansion in higher education and research without additional funding?

At Logica, we’re full of bright ideas for squeezing more individual and public benefits out of every pound. We start with shared services that eliminate duplication of effort across organisations, minimising energy use and releasing staff and facilities for more productive tasks.

At a time when it’s foreseeable that funding may be linked to energy reduction, managed data centres are one coming trend. A shared facility can make the high performance computing necessitated by much research more sustainable and economically viable.

It can also, as University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has discovered, be more efficient. We’ve migrated and hosted their new data centre, providing vital continuity and disaster recovery services for the group’s seven hospitals.

Admin can also be cash-intensive, so our shared services for tasks such as HR and payroll are already used by more than 30 educational institutions.

And our core strengths in IT and consultancy are being tailored to deliver shared services that meet the strategies and needs of organisations ranging from the Medical Research Council and Managing Information Across Partners (MIAP) to the University for Industry, in projects as diverse as measuring the impact of research grants, introducing the Unique Learning Number and LearnDirect.

Tim Clayton, programme director of one of the MIAP sponsors, the Learning and Skills Council, says, “The public sector can learn a great deal from private sector organisations like Logica as they have the experience of implementing many change programmes in government departments.”

It doesn’t end there. Other areas where we provide support to organisations working in higher education and research include customer relationship management; on-demand infrastructure; energy and carbon management and sustainability issues; systems orientated architectures; and applications development security.