Challenge
With the onset of COVID‐19, Royal Holloway re‐focused its 2020/21 IT programme with a view to achieving full online university status, delivering teaching, learning and research through multi‐ channel communication and collaboration. To achieve this, the university required a scalable, cost‐ effective and high‐performance solution for remote collaboration (e.g. group chat, file sharing, notebook sharing, assessment setting), supported by the right infrastructure.
One of the major limiting factors in this regard was that staff and students were in two separate tenancies, which would need to be consolidated.
In addition to the live environment, the university required a ‘non‐production’ environment to facilitate controlled software development, testing, and UAT, with minimal operating costs.
With a new academic year fast approaching, it was essential that all these solutions could be delivered within an eight‐week window.