About

Founded in 1963, the University of Essex (UE) is a leading institution that values curiosity, exploration, and pushing boundaries in academia. It’s committed to excellence in teaching and research, with a key focus on putting student success at the center of its mission.

As of 2022, they have over 17,800 students at three campuses and partner institutions.

Why Clearvision (Now part of Eficode)? 

The team at the UE was looking for a service provider that could offer them a perfect balance of professionalism, experience, and knowledge of Atlassian products. After conducting research on various Atlassian Platinum Solution Partners, the University of Essex chose to collaborate with Clearvision (now part of Eficode).

“Excellent communication, and at an affordable price. I am pleased to say we absolutely made the right decision.”

The Challenge

The university's IT team relied on Jira Service Desk (now Jira Service Management) to receive IT requests from staff and students. As a result, they required expert support to prevent any issues that could disrupt their critical software. 

Unfortunately, their current Atlassian vendor could not meet the rising demand, as JSD usage increased across the university. This left the IT team without any adequate resilience and became a source of frustration for them. As their licence and hosting renewal approached, the COVID-19 pandemic added even more pressure - they urgently needed to find a new provider to address these challenges.

The Solution

When the UE were switching to a new service provider, they were faced with an influx of Jira tickets due to the UK government's lockdown following COVID-19. With over 15,000 students and 2,100 employees relying on the Service Desk, any downtime was not an option.

Under strict time constraints, Clearvision migrated their instance of JSD to a hosted solution and performed a prior risk assessment, test migration, production migration, and go-live support.

Following a successful migration, their Jira Service Desk instance was upgraded to the latest Atlassian Enterprise release. This provided UE with the assurance of fixes for critical bugs and security issues.

“Clearvision had fantastic clear communication and project structure on the run-up to the move. All managed in an online platform, this made it easier for everyone to work out where we were in the process. They provided clarity on what could be achieved in our limited timeframe and were knowledgeable and responsive throughout. The level of support we received during the rollout and migration was amazing, particularly as the switch occurred during an incredibly difficult week for us. They even helped with a problem that occurred after the migration due to an issue with our previous hosting provider!

 

Everyone we’ve worked with at Clearvision knows exactly what they are doing, and this is seen through experience, knowledge, and professionalism. I am pleased to say this has continued in the form of ongoing support, and I am incredibly grateful to be working with a team that makes our Jira Service Desk installation easier, rather than more difficult to maintain.”    

Team member, University of Essex