JISC Advance Nexus is part of JISC Advance. JISC Advance is a not-for-profit organisation financed by the UK funding councils for further and higher education. As part of the JISC family, JISC Advance act as the delivery arm offering impartial advice and guidance across the post-16 sector. To find out more about JISC, you can visit the JISC website.

1. Nexus and RMAS
Further Education
29-10-12

2. What we do
• Nexus
– We build connectors/adaptors either as local ones to connect back
end systems or across the ESB where back end systems can be
connected to external Education Sector Organisations (for e.g.
HESA/HEDD or Agencies (for e.g. Councils, Transport, UKBA).
– This solves the problem of time consuming manual processing for
functions such as Student Registration and Enrolment but to mention
a few.
• RMAS
– Is NOT a single off the shelf system; IT IS:
– A procurement framework containing the ‘best-of-breed’ research
systems on the market,
– plus a set of free integration tools and methodologies,
– being built around a standard communications language, CERIF

3. Who we work with
NEXUS
RMAS
•
• Educational Establishments in
England and Wales including
Colleges
• Scottish Further Education Bodies
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
SOAS Student Registration and
Admin Portal - complete
Cranfield: DARE, XCRI-CAP
Birmingham: XCRI-CAP
Manchester: Moodle VLE and SRS
St Andrews – DARE
Bloomsbury Group: Library
Management Systems
York: Accommodation bookings
LJMU: Course selector
Ulster and Leeds: Banner to
Campus IT Quercus
Scottish FE Group
• Further Education in Northern
Ireland
• Central Government
Departments, Executive Agencies
and NDPBs
• Welsh Public Bodies National
Assembly for Wales, Welsh
Assembly Government and Welsh
Local Authorities

4. SLC
SLC
HEFCE
HEFCE
HESA
HESA
LLA’s
A’s
UCAS
UCAS
HEDD
HEDD
TfL
TfL
DARE
DARE
UK BA
UK BA
SR
SR
VLE
VLE
Nexus
Nexus
NHS
NHS
RMAS
RMAS
Modules
Modules
Data Standards
& Adapters
Data Standard
Data Standard
Bodies
Bodies
ESB Community
FE Colleges
FE Colleges
University
University
University
University
University
University
FE ESB or Adapter
FE ESB or Adapter
RMAS
RMAS
HR
HR
VLE
VLE
ID
ID
SR
SR
Suppliers
Suppliers
Services and
Services and
University
University
Products
University
Products
University
University
University

5. Why SOA & Why SOA in Education
Why SOA
•
•
•
•
•
•
SOA is business driven
SOA is standards based
SOA is reusable
SOA is extensible
SOA allows a plug and play
architecture
SOA does not require an all in one go
migration
Why SOA in Education
•
•
•
•
•
•
An SOA platform can be run in parallel
to existing EAI architecture
Assets can be migrated over time to a
SOA platform
Nexus can provide a cloud hosted
platform and help with the
implementation of a locally hosted
platform
Nexus adapters are reusable
Nexus adapters support standards for
Education (e.g. XCRI-CAP, DARE, HEDD)
Nexus simplifies integration with 3rd
party services

6. Sector Landscape & SOA
Sector Landscape
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
A changing financial regime -> force for
change
Monolithic IT systems based supplier
notions of ‘best practice’
– Supplemented by local systems to
overcome their shortcomings
Processes are constrained by what the
systems do
Lots of manual workarounds
More applications, higher complexity &
Information transfer tends to be batch
Data quality is poor
Resulting in:
Business can’t introduce new
offers/products/processes quickly
Student and staff experience is poor
Cost of IT is relatively high
Service Orientated Architecture
•
•
•
•
•
•
Where business and IS architecture meet
Process steps are delivered by component
services
Ease of reconfiguration == agility
A process can be thought of as an
orchestrated set of services - a work flow.
Using internet technologies software
components are delivered as web services
SOA can help clean data through master
data management and improved self-service
(bring your own data)

7. Nexus Connector Pricing
•
There is a charge to cover implementation costs
– These costs vary depending on the complexity of the work and the number of
Connectors and institution needs
•
For using the central ESB we charge an annual subscription of
– £5k for the first endpoint pair
– £1K for subsequent endpoint pairs
– Maximum of £20K for more than 20 end point pairs
•
We have a special offer
– However if an institution asks a to solve a problem for which there is
substantial demand, we may choose to waive to cost of implementation for
the first customer.
•
Local ESB pricing is separate

8. Technology Section

9. Nexus Technology Architecture
Nexus Presentation Layer – Google Web Toolkit & Alfresco Content
Management System
Nexus ESB Business Services – WS02 ESB
Nexus
WS02 Business Activity
WS02 Business Process Server
Security
Monitoring
Manager
WS02 Enterprise Service Bus
WS02
Governance
Registry
WS02 Application
Server
Optional
Presentation
Layer
Nexus ESB
Components
WS02 Data Services Server
SRS
Finance
• Aggresso
• Oracle
Financials
• Symmetry
IdM
Standards:
•SAML 2.0
•Shibboleth
•
•
•
•
Quercus
SITS
Banner
Peoplesoft
DAM /
CMS
Standards:
•CMIS
•JSR-170
VLE
• Moodle
• Blackboard
EDRMS
Standards:
•CMIS
LMS
• Millenium
CRM
Time
tabling
HR
• Northgate
• Scientia
Arinso
• Serco –
Facility CMIS • SAP
• Oracle
3rd Party
Services
Estates
• SAP
• TfL
• Council Tax
• DARE, Digitary
Payroll
• Northgate
Arinso
• SAP
• Oracle
Service
desk
• Hornbill –
Support
Works
Nexus
Adapters &
Standards

10. Nexus Adapters
– integrating with FE Systems
Nexus Adapters
Technologies
WS02 Data Services Server
Transports: HTTP, HTTPS, POP, IMAP, SMTP, JMS, AMQP, FIX, TCP, UDP, FTPS, SFTP, CIFS, MLLP, SMS
Formats & protocols: JSON, XML, SOAP 1.1, SOAP 1.2, WS-*, HTML, EDI, HL7, OAGIS, Hessian, Text, JPEG,
MP4, All binary formats, CORBA/IIOP
Transformation: XSLT, XPath, XQuery
Security: WS-Policy, WS-Security, LDAP, Kerberos, OpenID, SAML, XACML
Adapter Type
Data Views
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Aggresso
Quercus SRS
Millenium LMS
Scientia Timetabling
Oracle Financials
Symmetry
Banner
Serco – Facility CMS
Northgate Arinso
Hornbill – Support
Works
API Client
• Moodle
• SITS SRS
• Transport For London
Open Adapters
Identity Management
•SAML 2.0
•Shibboleth
•Liberty
Content Management
•CMIS
OotB Adapters
• SAP
• Oracle Peoplesoft
• Salesforce

11. Nexus Implementations
Working Demos
Digital Academic Higher Education
Achievement
Records
Exchange (DARE) Report (HEAR)
Student
Enrolment
Portal
Council
Tax &
TfL
XCRI-CAP
eXchanging Course
Related Information,
Course Advertising Profile
Nexus Presentation Layer – Google Web Toolkit & Alfresco Content
Management System
Nexus ESB Business Services – WS02 ESB
Nexus
WS02 Business Activity
WS02 Business Process Server
Security
Monitoring
Manager
WS02 Enterprise Service Bus
WS02 Application
Server
WS02 Data Services Server
WS02
Governance
Registry
Nexus
Consumers
Nexus
Solutions
Optional
Presentation
Layer
Nexus ESB
Components

12. Further Nexus Implementations
Digital Academic
Records Exchange
phase 2 (DARE2)
Higher Education
Achievement
Report (HEAR)
Student Enrolment
Portal Extensions
Nexus Presentation Layer
XCRI-CAP
eXchanging Course Related
Information, Course
Advertising Profile
Nexus ESB
Moodle Integration
with further Student
Record Systems
Moodle & 3rd Party
Marking System /
Service Integration
Council Tax &
TfL London
Wide Service
Borders Agency
Integration

13. WS02 Selection
•
•
•
•
Nexus ran vendor selection of
leading SOA platforms that
could support the specific
requirements of FE
WS02 was selected as the
leading enterprise open
source platform
WS02 had an initially strong
offering and strategic vision
for SOA 2.0
We have found WS02 easy to
learn and configure

14. WS02 Architecture

15. Nexus Architecture on WS02 Stack

16. ESB Example: FE Mergers

17. FE Mergers
•
•
FE colleges face specific technical challenges when presented with mergers:
– To greenfield or not & other Enterprise Architecture decisions
– Data challenges with data split across multiple systems and need for data
cleansing before migration
– Maximising value from existing systems
– Avoiding duplication of effort
An ESB can help with these issues
– Providing facades from existing systems
– Simplify integration of different systems
– Retain value and investment in existing systems by aggregating and routing
according to rules
– Simplify merger IT roadmap

18. Greenfield example,
other models available
FE Mergers - Challenges
Individual Institutions Have Complex IT Estates
•Complex parallel system architectures
•Different identity management solutions
•Different point to point solutions
•Different data sources
•Huge data aggregation challenge
•Difficult to assess system capitalisation
•Issues with defining strategic architecture
FE 1
FE 2
Finance
SRS
VLE
Finance
SRS
VLE
IdM
EDRMS
LMS
IdM
EDRMS
LMS
CRM
Estates
Payroll
CRM
Estates
Payroll
Service
Desk
Time
tabling
HR
Service
Desk
Time
tabling
HR

19. Greenfield example,
other models available
FE Mergers – SOA
FE Merger
Nexus Business Services
Nexus ESB
Nexus Adapters
Nexus Adapters
FE 1
FE 2
Finance
SRS
VLE
Finance
SRS
VLE
IdM
EDRMS
LMS
IdM
EDRMS
LMS
CRM
Estates
Payroll
CRM
Estates
Payroll
Service Desk
Time tabling
HR
Service Desk
Time tabling
HR
The Nexus ESB can help
with the integration between
multiple FE systems:
•Nexus ESB allows
institution to buffer need for
major system replacement
and to roadmap their own IT
estate migration
•Nexus business services
and adapters obfuscate
back end systems
•Nexus can provide cloud
based services for such
functions as Master Data
Mgmt

20. Conclusion

21. In Summary
• ESBs standardise and simplify making connections between
systems
• The Service Registry and Repository introduces governance
which means:
• Services are visible and managed
• Services follow a standard delivery process
• Service implementation (Code) is deployed centrally
• Services themselves are dynamic and re-locatable
• These approaches collectively deliver a solution that is
manageable, flexible and has a low configuration overhead for
new or changing end points

22. Nexus FE Solutions
• We need you to help us produce solutions and services for
the FE arena
• Remember our special offer:
• However if an institution asks a to solve a problem for
which there is substantial demand, we may choose to
waive to cost of implementation for the first customer.

23. Student Enrolment Portal Demo
Test it yourself here:
•http://www.hefty.ws/stureg-1.0-SNAPSHOT/
•Users 1001 & 1002
•Click ‘Load Student Data’ button
View the SOAS success story here:
•http://prezi.com/1xwyztrvxb0i/nexus-soasstudent-registration-portal/

24. Student Enrolment Portal – Landing Page

25. Student Enrolment Portal – All Accordians

26. Student Enrolment Portal – Course Selection

27. Thank you for listening
Questions

28. Contact Us
• Join our linked in group – JISC Advance Nexus
• Nexus www.nexus.ac.uk
– sharlene.jobson@jiscadvance.ac.uk
– charles.gibbons@jiscadvance.ac.uk
• RMAS www.rmas.ac.uk
– simon.foster@jiscadvance.ac.uk