Jisc Services Ltd

Session Border Controller - SBC as a service - Microsoft Teams

Managed enterprise telephony/voice service for MS Teams using direct routing, gateway between networks for VoIP telephony, UC solutions. Session Border Controller SBC as a service hosted sits on the private cloud in the Janet Network; world-class, private network designed for the performance needs of customer in conjunction with SIP Trunking.

Features

• Access to a Oracle ‘carrier-grade’ hosted SBC solution
• Flexible provisioning supports your organisation as it grows
• Our organisation-centred commercials align to sector needs
• SIP Trunks are configured with a resilient SBC as standard
• 3, or 5 year contract includes a call minute bundle
• Contract includes a UK GEO and mobile minutes bundle
• Dynamic monthly billing, with bill reports by email
• Free 60 Day Trial
• 1 year contract on request

Benefits

• Bring your own MS Teams Licenses
• Agile, Scalable and Flexible
• Fully managed reducing demands on internal resources
• Dedicated technical team for support
• Organisation-centred commercials for cost efficiencies
• Underpinned by existing Janet IP connections, or Janet Cloud Connect
• Supports digital transformation and maximizes investment in Microsoft Teamse
• Resiliency across our solution component ensure high availability
• Pre-sales support and service support are included
• Bring your own SIP provider

£15.00 a unit

• Education pricing available
• Free trial available

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at bid.support@jisc.ac.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 14

Service ID

331168504029859

Contact

Bid Support
03003002212
bid.support@jisc.ac.uk

Service scope

• Software add-on or extension: No
• Cloud deployment model: Private cloud
• Service constraints: Provisioning requires a minimum of 5 Channels / sessions are required. ; ; The service can only be billed by Direct Debit
• System requirements: Microsoft Teams A1/A3 or A5 License

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: Response Time ; ; Critical - 15 Minutes ; Major - 60 Minutes ; Minor - 4 Business hours ; Information - 1 Business day
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: No
• Phone support: Yes
• Phone support availability: 24 hours, 7 days a week
• Web chat support: No
• Onsite support: No
• Support levels: Target availability; The service is offered for 24 hours every day of the year. It relies on a number of components:; IP connectivity - your access to the SBC platform is dependent on the availability of your IP Connection.; Jisc’s SBC platform - the platform uses a ‘carrier grade’ Oracle SBC in a high availability pair. The availability of the hardware is 99.999%.; Resilient SIP trunk endpoints - our SIP trunk endpoints are configured as standard, with a resilient SBC, for automatic failover and failback.; Service Level Agreement; Emergency cover is provided outside normal working hours. Contacts requiring assistance will be asked to specify whether the call is urgent or non-urgent. Urgent calls are relayed to an on-call engineer for immediate action; non-urgent calls are dealt with at the beginning of the next working day. The fault reporting information provided by the Jisc Service Desk includes the telephone number for the emergency service. If the problem reported requires attention outside normal working hours then the site contact must be available to discuss the matter with the engineer when the call is returned.
• Support available to third parties: Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

• Getting started: Jisc provide full onboarding user documentation to facilitate the smooth service transition to the managed SBC service. The guide covers the technical requirement to set up the service and includes Customer Acceptance Test (CAT) , designed as a 2 step testing plan. ; For customers who are new to Teams telephony Jisc provide workshops on-line to support the set up and migration to the service. This work is completed by the Jisc engineering team who work directly to complete onboarding. For customers who wish Jisc to provision the SIP trunks a separate process to collect DDI number ranges and agree the porting of the new service is collected during the pre-sales process.
• Service documentation: Yes
• Documentation formats:
  • PDF
  • Other
• Other documentation formats:
  • Word XML
  • Excel XLSX
  • PowerPoint PPT
• End-of-contract data extraction: There is no data for the users to extract from the Jisc service. Once notification to cease has been received the off boarding date confirmed, the process deletes the of customer IP addresses and configuration from the hosted SBC, erasing the service.
• End-of-contract process: Once termination notice has been received the process to off board will be instigated. ; Where SIP trunks have been included in the service, it is the customer responsibility to provide a Customer Letter of Authority to the new provider. ; Once a date has been agreed for the porting of the new service then a date will be agreed to to cease and remove customer IP addresses and configuration removed from the Jisc platform. There is no additional charge for this service.

Using the service

• Web browser interface: No
• Application to install: No
• Designed for use on mobile devices: No
• Service interface: No
• User support accessibility: None or don’t know
• API: No
• Customisation available: Yes
• Description of customisation: • what can be customised; ; The service is deigned to be flexible to customer needs and used in conjunction with Teams Voice and IP-PBX systems. ; ; SIP trunks can be utilised through existing providers as a Bring your own SIP Provider for the SBC service only. ; ; The service can be flexed up and down in order to reflect seasonable demand and this is available on the SBC platform and with our channel partner Gamma. ; ; Jisc can provide a separate backup service in the event of a business continuity requirement as a to existing services or as a stand alone service. ; ; • how users can customise; ; Requests can be made to the Jisc SBC team via the Relationship Management Team . ; ; • who can customise; ; Jisc will scope and complete the request.

Scaling

• Independence of resources: Our solution matches SIP channel provision to SBC session provision. SBC provision is assigned to a fixed organisation so that one organisation's usage ( or over use) cannot impact another.

Analytics

• Service usage metrics: Yes
• Metrics types: Call volume and capacity management for the SIP trunks on request.
• Reporting types: Reports on request

Resellers

• Supplier type: Reseller providing extra features and support
• Organisation whose services are being resold: Gamma SIP

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Other security clearance
• Government security clearance: None

Asset protection

• Knowledge of data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Data storage and processing locations: United Kingdom
• User control over data storage and processing locations: No
• Datacentre security standards: Supplier-defined controls
• Penetration testing frequency: At least once a year
• Penetration testing approach: In-house
• Protecting data at rest: Physical access control, complying with another standard
• Data sanitisation process: Yes
• Data sanitisation type: Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
• Equipment disposal approach: A third-party destruction service

Data importing and exporting

• Data export approach: N/A
• Data export formats: Other
• Other data export formats: N/A
• Data import formats: Other
• Other data import formats: N/A

Data-in-transit protection

• Data protection between buyer and supplier networks:
  • Private network or public sector network
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
• Data protection within supplier network: Other
• Other protection within supplier network: Optional full optical separation from end site to cloud provider is available at additional cost.

Availability and resilience

• Guaranteed availability: The service is offered for 24 hours every day of the year. It relies on a number of components:; IP connectivity - your access to the SBC platform is dependent on the availability of your IP Connection.; Jisc’s SBC platform - the platform uses a ‘carrier grade’ Oracle SBC in a high availability pair. The availability of the hardware is 99.999%.; Resilient SIP trunk endpoints - our SIP trunk endpoints are configured as standard, with a resilient SBC, for automatic failover and failback.
• Approach to resilience: Through high availability SBC infrastructure, hosted in a resilient Janet Network Data Centre. More information available on request.; Our SIP Trunks are integrated into two SBCs for resiliency.
• Outage reporting: The SBC infrastructure monitored by a third party and by our own Network Operations Centre.

Identity and authentication

• User authentication needed: Yes
• User authentication: 2-factor authentication
• Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels: Access is only provided to authorised users and to the functionality they are authorised to use
• Access restriction testing frequency: Never
• Management access authentication: 2-factor authentication

Audit information for users

• Access to user activity audit information: No audit information available
• Access to supplier activity audit information: No audit information available
• How long system logs are stored for: Between 6 months and 12 months

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: Yes
• Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001: LRQA
• ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date: 10/10/2023
• What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover: None
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: No
• Cyber essentials: Yes
• Cyber essentials plus: No
• Other security certifications: No

Security governance

• Named board-level person responsible for service security: Yes
• Security governance certified: Yes
• Security governance standards: ISO/IEC 27001
• Information security policies and processes: ISO27001 and ISO9001. ; ; Jisc have a dedicated QMS team who oversee the compliance with these policies, and a named Chief Information Security Officer. Regular reviews and audits are held.

Operational security

• Configuration and change management standard: Supplier-defined controls
• Configuration and change management approach: Configuration and change management processes aligned with ITIL and enshrined in ISO9001 QMS.
• Vulnerability management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Vulnerability management approach: Vulnerability notifications received for manufacturers are evaluated based on the risk to our systems and our ability to mitigate without upgrading software, since new software inevitably increases the risks of bugs and new vulnerabilities. Many vulnerabilities are mitigated via router access controls to prevent access to the service exploited via the vulnerability. Where this is not possible, software upgrades will be performed to install fixes.
• Protective monitoring type: Supplier-defined controls
• Protective monitoring approach: Jisc has a dedicated Security Operations Centre that monitors the Janet network for security threats and responds to incidents.
• Incident management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Incident management approach: Incident triggers include; our monitoring systems, engineers or customer calls. New incidents are logged by the service desk and passed to engineers for investigation. Problems will be resolved by engineers in collaboration with our technology partners. Jisc will own and manage the incident throughout, updating the customer with regularly progress reports. Incidents affecting multiple organisations will trigger a tiered Major Incident response, based on the number of organisations affected and the severity of the disruption. Our dedicated incident response team manage Major Incidents, ensuring that appropriate technical resources are mobilised, while keeping customers and Jisc senior management regularly briefed.

Secure development

• Approach to secure software development best practice: Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)

Public sector networks

• Connection to public sector networks: Yes
• Connected networks:
  • Joint Academic Network (JANET)
  • Other
• Other public sector networks: Gamma SIP

Social Value

• Social Value:

  Social Value

  • Fighting climate change
  • Covid-19 recovery
  • Tackling economic inequality
  • Equal opportunity
  • Wellbeing

  Fighting climate change

  As part of our core strategy for 2022-2025 the theme ‘Be a force for good’ recognises sustainability as an organisational imperative. Committed to achieving Net Zero emissions by 2040, 10 years ahead of government target, we plan to cut our emissions by over half by 2030 and be net zero across our remaining scope three emissions (net zero plus) by at least 2050. We have a Net Zero Roadmap outlining how we will reduce emissions and our plans for future projects.; Below are some examples of what we have done:; ; Lowered our carbon footprint by: reducing the size of our estate, motion-controlled lighting to save electricity in our Bristol office, as well as generating electricity through solar power. ; ; Reduced travel emissions by: a hybrid working model, introduction of a staff electric car scheme, alongside an existing cycle to work scheme. ; ; An Environmental Policy outlining our commitment to continually improve our environmental performance: We are developing an environmental management system to ISO14001, this will guide action across key areas, such as consumption, waste, biodiversity, travel.; ; Started to embed sustainability into our procurement processes: We will introduce a Sustainable Procurement Policy to drive this further.; ; Sustainable Jisc Events: Jisc’s Digifest event offered a meat free menu, estimated to have saved 6.4 tonnes of carbon. Catering was locally sourced, and any food waste was disposed through anaerobic digestion. We encouraged exhibitors to use digital messaging, reducing printed materials. Our event app reduced the amount of printing required, and any required event printing is now FSC certified and fully recyclable. ; ; Reuse or recycle old IT equipment: Wiped and sold for reuse old IT equipment, and recycled equipment not suitable for reuse, resulting in zero waste to landfill. In 2022/23 we recycled over 370 pieces of IT equipment.

  Covid-19 recovery

  Providing our people with the flexibility they need to balance their personal lives and do well at work, Jisc offers a range of ways of working, including flexible hours and working from home. We have adopted a hybrid working model for most roles. Flexible working eliminates the limitations posed by geographical location and personal circumstances. To support their home working environment, remote workers are provided with an allowance for equipment and advice and training on DSE.; For the benefit of people and community, everyone at Jisc can make a difference, with up to three paid volunteering days per year. In 2022/23 29% of our staff took a volunteering day. Colleagues used 321 volunteering days across the year for the benefit of people and community. Examples include, foodbanks, animal sanctuaries, helping children to learn to read, litter picking, giving blood.

  Tackling economic inequality

  We are an accredited Living Wage Employer. Jisc meets the standards set by Citizens UK and the Living Wage Foundation by signing the ‘UK Living Wage Employer' licence agreement. This agreement confirms that Jisc pay the Real Living Wage as a minimum. We also ensure that people in our supply chain delivering goods and services are paid the National Living Wage as a minimum.; Jisc is committed to the development of our people, and encourage they use 10% of their time on development. To help our people to upskill and achieve, they have access to a huge variety of learning resources including access to the full LinkedIn Learning catalogue. Where a qualification is directly linked to career progression, Jisc contribute or cover the full cost of the training. ; Jisc provide their employees with a number of benefits. For example, our Pay Framework gives a fair, flexible and transparent pay structure to work within. Our employee Healthcare cash plan allows members to claim back everyday healthcare costs, like dental or eye care. ; Apprenticeships provide an amazing opportunity to boost the skills of the local community and beyond. We are extremely proud of our apprenticeship scheme at Jisc, which cover legals, marketing, network engineering, procurement, HR and finance. Our scheme celebrates diversity, and we know that it is critical to our success. We work hard to make sure we’re inclusive and welcome all applicants who share our values and want to join us in our mission to improve lives through digital transformation.

  Equal opportunity

  One of Jisc’s guiding principles ‘Always Inclusive’ reflects our commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). ; Our EDI policy outlines our commitment to de-constructing systemic racism and other barriers which have historically affected under-represented groups in the workplace. We strive to be an organisation where everyone here is able to be their authentic self and recognise the benefits of diversity with regards to innovation, team performance and organisation-wide productivity. ; We engage with external partners such as the Black Leadership Group and Emerge. Emerge are co-designing on the delivery of our Conscious Inclusion of Leaders Programme. In 2023 we launched a new Board and Committee diversity policy. The Board believes a mix of skills, knowledge and experience with different perspectives and insights builds a strong foundation for well-informed decision-making and as a consequence, better performance of Jisc in support of its stakeholders. ; Our EDI steering group meets quarterly to address inclusion-related topics from our employee networks, including the faith and LGBTQIA+ networks. We provide EDI training through our leadership program and have conducted anti-racism masterclasses for staff. Our recruitment team has also received inclusion-focused personal development and assists hiring managers in refining their practices.; We won’t accept modern slavery, forced labour or any human trafficking anywhere within our operations or supply chain. Our Modern Slavery working group assess risk areas, implement improvements and monitor progress against our Modern Slavery objectives and policy. Staff are educated on how to report modern slavery in the workplace and what signs to look for. ; Currently four of nine of our executive leadership team are women, including our CEO. According to benchmarking we carry out as part of our commitment to the Tech Talent Charter, we are above the national average for employing women in tech roles, having 31% taken by women against 28% nationally.

  Wellbeing

  The health and wellbeing of our staff is crucial to us. In 2023 we introduced a new benefits package for staff including an employer paid healthcare cash plan, an electric car scheme and the opportunity to buy additional annual leave. We offer a cycle to work scheme and an employee assistance programme for advice on a range of legal, financial, physical, emotional and mental health issues. We value good work/life balance and work flexibly. We also offer a generous leave entitlement, enhanced sick policy and enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption leave in addition to statutory entitlement, and shared parental leave. ; Trained to support our staff, we have 41 (April 2024) mental health first aiders easily assessable to our people across our geographical locations. Promoting and delivering wellbeing initiatives within Jisc, some of our mental health first aiders are also wellbeing champions. ; Providing staff with education, support and tools to help them live a happier and healthier life, they have access to a Wellbeing centre through our Jisc reward scheme, where they can access a range of resources to support wellbeing.; Our employee assistance programme provides staff and their immediate family access to confidential advice on a number of topics covering physical, mental, financial advice and is accessible through various mediums. ; Volunteering has been shown to improve mental health, by giving a sense of purpose and reducing stress and anxiety. Our staff can use up to three days volunteering per year. Through our volunteering network, staff share their experiences with others.

Pricing

• Price: £15.00 a unit
• Discount for educational organisations: Yes
• Free trial available: Yes
• Description of free trial: Jisc offer a free trial of 60 days (2 weeks setup - 6 weeks to test)

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at bid.support@jisc.ac.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.