Technology

IPL helps UCAS scoop top award

February 27, 2014 Anita Jaynes

2 min read

UCAS, the higher education admissions service, has been awarded ‘Best public sector project’ at the UK Cloud Awards, for its successful delivery of A Level Results Day 2013. The day saw 386,000 students across England and Wales use its cloud-based Track system to find out whether they had been successful in their applications to university or college. Track was designed, built and operated by IPL, the Bath-based consultancy and full-service IT company that has worked with UCAS for a number of years.

Track was part of a large-scale project to move key UCAS systems into the cloud, to ensure they provided a robust and high-quality service on A Level Results Day. Track saw a total of 1.17m logins on the day, from tablets, smartphones and computer web browsers, peaking at more than 180 per second.

Dragons’ Den star Piers Linney spoke at the awards about how cloud computing has come of age, a sentiment highlighted by the quality of the entrants. UCAS beat off high-profile competition to secure the prize, at what was the inaugural UK Cloud Awards ceremony.

Steve Jeffree, Chief Operating Officer at UCAS said: “We are delighted to have won the award which acknowledges the hard work that went into protecting students from a potential storm on results day.

“The success of the resilient cloud system is a tribute, not only to our IT team but to the universities and colleges who gave us their help and patience while we made vital technical changes ahead of our most important day.

“I would also like to thank our many technology partners who were instrumental in this success – including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Attenda, IPL and Cognizant.”

Sue Purdin, Sales and Marketing Director at IPL, said: “We’re incredibly pleased that Track has contributed to UCAS winning this fantastic award. Track is a unique system that needs to withstand high levels of online access in a single 24-hour period. By using cloud technology, we were able to create a system that can scale up to meet these demands, while remaining incredibly cost-effective.”