What We Offer
Let us help you find the right solution.
We want to work with you to solve your business problems, not simply install and manage your IT solutions. We have over half a decade of experience working with the major cloud providers and have pre-negotiated agreements offering favorable terms for our customers. UCF IT has spent significant time and effort properly implementing security features and integrating our cloud environments with existing network and authentication systems. Our Information Security Office has vetted hundreds of SaaS solutions and we know the right questions to ask to ensure university data is not being put at unnecessary risk.
Let us put our cloud knowledge and experience to work for you. Spend less of your time and effort on IT so we can all focus on our common goal to positively impact higher education through scale and excellence.
Contact your department’s Business Relationship Manager to get started.
Cloud Consultation
We will always seek to use whichever cloud provider best meets your specific needs based on our ability to deliver that solution.
Do you have questions about cloud? Do you have a business problem and wondering if a cloud-based solution may be the answer? Do you have a cloud solution in mind but you’re not sure where to go next? Our cloud team is here to help with a free one hour consultation to assist with cloud adoption, architecture review, design, security, best practices, and recommendations. Our goal is to provide the appropriate cloud solution based on your unique business needs.
Software In the Cloud
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is our recommended cloud model of choice whenever possible.
To ensure the most efficient use of UCF IT resources and deliver solutions designed to meet the diverse needs of our customers, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is our recommended cloud model of choice whenever possible. However, there are many technical, legal, and service considerations that may not be clear from a vendor’s description. UCF is a complicated environment for system implementations and the university has requirements that may be unfamiliar, even to vendors who have worked with other higher education clients.
To help you navigate these challenges, UCF’s Information Security Office has established a Vendor Risk Management (VRM) review process. This assessment is required for any department or business unit contracting with a third party service provider for the purposes of storing, transmitting, processing, or collecting university data on our behalf.
How do you know if a specific SaaS solution is the right for you?
If you’re not sure whether a specific SaaS solution may be right for you, UCF IT is here to help. Based on our experience working with many types of providers, we’ve gathered some questions you should consider before moving forward with a SaaS solution. We encourage you to address them directly with the provider and make sure you’re comfortable with the answers provided.
SUPPORTED Providers
Before you begin the process of searching for a cloud solution provider to meet your specific needs, it may be helpful to find out whether the university already has a relationship with an existing vendor. By avoiding duplication of service offerings, you can get up and running sooner and support our goals for operational efficiency.
Below are some of our key providers that have pre-negotiated agreements with UCF and provide strategic value to the university.
Microsoft Office 365
Email, File Sharing, Unified Communication, Content Management, Business Intelligence
Salesforce
Customer Relationship Management
Canvas
Learning Management System
ServiceNow
Service Lifecycle & Incident Management
Workday
Enterprise Resource Planning
Panopto
Video Lecture Capture
Qualtrics
Survey & Experience Management
Pantheon
Shared WordPress Hosting
Microsoft Azure Managed Service
Microsoft Azure is our preferred provider for cloud computing IaaS and PaaS services. Our team has years of experience and knowledge within this platform and the university has made significant investments to ensure tight integrations with existing authentication systems and network services. We’ve built a robust, scalable, highly-available, and secure environment to handle a variety of customer workloads.
Our managed service includes:
- Pass through provider costs, +25% service charge
- Architecture cost estimate, design, and review
- Provision and configure environment infrastructure resources and permissions
- Ongoing infrastructure administration, support, and maintenance
- Connectivity to core services including AD domains, enterprise backup, and password management
- Enhanced cost tracking, visibility, and forecasting
- Cost optimization through reservations and right-sizing recommendations
Popular Services
- Virtual Machines – Provision Windows and Linux virtual machines
- Storage – Durable, highly available, and massively scalable cloud storage
- Ultra SSD – Storage for IO intensive workloads with low latency and high throughput needs
- Cool & Archive Storage – For storing rarely accessed data
- Azure Files – Serverless managed files shares
- Azure SQL and MySQL – Managed, intelligent, and scalable cloud databases
- Azure Backup – Simplify data protection and protect against ransomware
- Azure CycleCloud – HPC orchestration, scheduling, and management
- Traffic Manager – Optimally route DNS traffic, providing high availability and responsiveness
- Azure DNS – Host your non-EDU domain in Azure
- Content Delivery Network – Ensure secure, reliable content delivery with broad global reach
Azure, AWS, & Google Cloud Self-Service
For those who prefer to manage their own resources, we can also provision space within our existing public cloud environments for you to build whatever you need. Our self-service offering includes:
- Pass through costs, no additional markup
- Optional budget alerts
- Provisioning of resource group or subscription/account/project as needed
- Access permissions assignment
- Direct access to cloud provider portal & tools
Additional benefits
Regardless of whether you choose our managed or self-service offering, partnering with UCF IT for your public cloud infrastructure needs gives you access to the following additional benefits:
- Convenient monthly internal billing
- No additional charges for shared networking, security, and data protection infrastructure
- 5% discount off all Azure on-demand list pricing
- 5% discount off all Google Cloud on-demand list pricing
- 10-20% discount for some research workloads (based on provider, funding source, and data type)
- Tax exemption, no network egress charges (as applicable), and potential volume discount pricing
- Baseline security, auditing, and compliance through a UCF IT managed environment
- Favorable and compliant terms and conditions through our pre-negotiated vendor agreements
- BAA access for highly regulated workloads
- Integration with university identity
- Connectivity to UCF’s internal network for applicable workloads
- Complementary access to vendor subject matter experts and architecture design review
- Enhanced vendor training opportunities