University of Derby Elevates the Student Experience
In just six months, the University of Derby successfully transitioned to the cloud by positioning F5 Distributed Cloud Services at the core of its application delivery strategy. This not only enhanced the University’s security posture, it also simplified the resolution of latency issues, helping ensure a seamless, first-class experience for students.
Business Challenge
From coral reef preservation to data science and managing chronic pain, the University of Derby is helping to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges. It is home to around 20,000 students, attracted by state-of-the-art learning facilities and placements and partnerships with business partners such as Rolls-Royce. All of these stakeholders rely on the University’s IT infrastructure managed by the Digital Solutions and Services team.
The IT department plays a crucial role in advancing the institution’s business objectives. Operating within a competitive environment, the University is focused on delivering first-class student experience and outcomes to achieve its strategic aims.
With a relatively small IT team and budget compared with private sector organizations, the University draws on best-in-class technology solutions that help maximize the efficiency of internal resources. These solutions include F5 BIG-IP products, which enabled the institution to manage on-premises network traffic and security for 15 years before a recent migration of most workloads to a Microsoft Azure cloud environment.
The infrastructure team seized the opportunity to enhance the new architecture with modern, cloud-based services and tools. This was a key success factor for the project when the original 12- to 18-month migration schedule shrank to just six months.
Solutions
Richard Lock, Principal Infrastructure Engineer at the University of Derby, and his team explored several cloud management options, quickly realizing that F5 Distributed Cloud Services offered the greatest flexibility and value.
“As an existing F5 BIG-IP customer, we were impressed by how far the product portfolio has developed to support our cloud migration. These features are firmly in step with our ambitions to deliver state-of-the-art IT services to students and staff,” he says.
F5 Distributed Cloud Services offers a more intuitive way to view all incoming traffic down to individual requests, making troubleshooting significantly easier. This enhanced visibility was an asset during the migration, enabling the infrastructure team—along with the F5 support team—to quickly identify and resolve issues with application delivery as they arose.
The inclusion of F5 Distributed Cloud WAF was another major advantage as was DDoS mitigation capabilities. Both capabilities offered value for money compared with competitor offerings, enabling the University to strengthen its security posture while controlling costs.
Lock was also impressed by features that were more suitable than some of the native-cloud technologies. This includes extending the F5 Distributed Cloud platform and services out to the customer edge via deployable software (CEs) to utilize Distributed Cloud App Connect for load balancing for internal apps such as PeopleSoft, the student record system. In addition to reducing latency by consuming these services locally, the University now has greater flexibility to direct traffic across its infrastructure as needed.
Today, the University’s setup includes numerous app-facing load balancers via the clustered CE nodes at each site. It also plans to add additional CEs in its disaster recovery (DR) site. This will help simplify its DR architecture, making it easier to manage and maintain overall system resilience.
Lock says, “The hybrid SaaS capabilities allow us to extend the Distributed Cloud platform and services to our edge and is a standout feature for any university or organization looking to simplify and streamline security and connectivity. It enabled us to navigate the complexities of the project effectively and achieve our goals in the limited time available.”
Most recently, the University deployed Distributed Cloud DNS. Previously, it used a secondary DNS service through its ISP, which provided limited traffic visibility. Without adequate data and analytics, the University couldn’t fully ensure the customer experience being delivered and the impact on current or prospective students. With F5, the IT team can see analytics on DNS traffic patterns and performance and drill into individual requests. With this information, the University can quickly identify ways to optimize and provide a seamless student experience.
Results
Easy to learn and use
One of the standout aspects of F5 Distributed Cloud Services is its ease of use, especially when compared to other solutions. While the University did use managed services for onboarding, F5 Distributed Cloud Services made it easy to get up to speed and the team at Derby quickly started handling implementations on their own.
“The F5 Distributed Cloud console makes it easier for all team members to manage and monitor our systems,” says Lock. “The user-friendly design reduces effort compared to managing multiple, separate services, allowing us to maximize the value of our F5 deployment from day one. Being able to automate provisioning using existing tools such as Terraform was also a key requirement.”
Cloud migration tailored to the organization
The flexibility of F5 Distributed Cloud Services empowers the University to deliver modern and legacy applications in the cloud, reducing the need for separate load balancers and application delivery infrastructure.
Managing certificates, a massive time saver
Automated certificate management also drove significant value for the University. Previously, the University requested and renewed application delivery certificates manually, which was time consuming and made it difficult to meet the 90-day or less certificate rotation requirement advocated by Google and others. Now, with F5 Distributed Cloud Services, it can use the automated certificate configuration for each load balancer and application.
This automation not only helps maintain security compliance but also significantly reduces the administrative workload. “F5’s automated certificate management is a great time saver for our team, allowing us to focus on other critical tasks while ensuring that we maintain stringent security standards,” says Lock.
Greater visibility for a better student experience
The University was facing latency issues with PeopleSoft during cloud migration and testing, due to the volume of intra-application connections the software generates as it manages user sessions and database interactions.
This is where F5 Distributed Cloud Services have been a game-changer, enabling the team to visualize data quickly and then drill down to specific issues in detail when required. The University can now identify the sources of latency and make traffic routing adjustments with Distributed Cloud App Connect to reduce connection times. These granular insights enable the IT team to troubleshoot with confidence, turning subjective perceptions into clear, evidence-based decisions that support a smoother student experience.
Strengthened University security posture
One of the University’s goals was to deploy a self-managing web application firewall (WAF) that required minimum oversight from IT staff. “F5 Distributed Cloud WAF gives us peace of mind by protecting our applications, students, and staff from cyberthreats without incurring extra costs. It works out of the box in default mode, and we can fine tune it as and when we need,” says Lock.
By managing application defenses without incurring lots of administrative overhead, the University reduces pressure on staff and budgets. These efficiencies are invaluable, allowing the team to maintain robust security without overextending limited resources.
Scalable for value and growth
The University experiences peaks in demand throughout the year, but the F5 global network, including all the points of presence (POPs) and the available bandwidth, is more than sufficient to meet its needs.
If it does need to add new applications or integrate additional research or partner requirements, it can simply purchase more subscription credits to accommodate growth. This scalability enables it to adjust quickly without needing to over-provision or re-architect the entire system, reducing the pressure on Lock and his team.
- Enable migration to cloud environment in just six months
- Help attract students in a competitive market
- Protect against cyberthreats and DDoS attacks
- Simplify and reduce administrative tasks
- Migrate cloud apps under time, budget constraints
- Resolve latency issues to improve student experience
- Defend institution from cyberattacks
- Ease workload on small, in-house team