Bradford College

The Client

Bradford College 🔗 have delivered quality Further and Higher education and training in England for more than 185 years and are one of the biggest Further Education colleges in the UK. They are also one of the largest providers of Higher Education outside of the university sector. In total, Bradford's student body is around 20,000 strong.

What Was Needed

Bradford is a large mixed economy college with a large student and staff population, running Shibboleth on Tomcat and CentOS Linux as part of the UK federation 🔗 for access to electronic resources.

Sirius has worked with Bradford College since 2015. Initially they needed help with a move from one proprietary directory server to another and integrating their Shibboleth server with the new backend directory. Other requirements over time have included

  • Integrate EZProxy with Shibboleth
  • Upgrade Shibboleth from v2 to v3
  • Training for Shibboleth system tasks
  • Extend Single-Sign-On (SSO) to LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com 🔗)

Sirius provides all ongoing Shibboleth support and maintenance for the College.

Sirius Recommends

Combined with our Consultancy, Deployment work, and ongoing Support, Sirius recommends these Open Source technologies:

The Outcome

Since our first assignment with Bradford College we have:

  • Successfully migrated Shibboleth from one proprietary backend directory to another, translating and solving all configuration and syntax differences.
  • Migrated Shibboleth from version 2 to version 3, while maintaining all functionality and minimising downtime.
  • Trained Bradford IT staff for everyday Shibboleth system tasks.
  • Integrated EZProxy with Shibboleth seamlessly.
  • Successfully extended Shibboleth SSO to LinkedIn Learning.

Sirius continues to provide comprehensive ongoing Shibboleth support and maintenance.

If you would like an expert, free and no-obligation discussion of your own Shibboleth needs, simply have us reach out to you or call us now on 0333 344 5054.