The University of Cambridge Computing Service provided computing facilities across the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

between 1970 and 2014. It was located primarily on the

New Museums Site The New Museums Site is a major site of the University of Cambridge, located on Pembroke Street and Free School Lane, sandwiched between Corpus Christi College, Pembroke College and Lion Yard. Its postcode is CB2 3QH. The smaller and older o ...

, Free School Lane, in the centre of

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge beca ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

but, in September 2013 moved to the Roger Needham Building on the

West Cambridge West Cambridge is a university site to the west of Cambridge city centre in England. As part of the ''West Cambridge Master Plan'', several of the University of Cambridge's departments have relocated to the West Cambridge site from the centre ...

site. The Computing Service shares a common ancestry with the

University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory The Department of Computer Science and Technology, formerly the Computer Laboratory, is the computer science department of the University of Cambridge. it employed 35 academic staff, 25 support staff, 35 affiliated research staff, and about 15 ...

. Founded on 14 May 1937 ''to provide a computing service for general use, and to be a centre for the development of computational techniques in the University'' as the ''Mathematical Laboratory'' (under the leadership of

John Lennard-Jones Sir John Edward Lennard-Jones (27 October 1894 – 1 November 1954) was a British mathematician and professor of theoretical physics at the University of Bristol, and then of theoretical science at the University of Cambridge. He was an imp ...

), it was not until 2001 that the provision of computing services across the University and Colleges was fully separated from computing research and teaching. On 30 March 2014, the Computing Service merged with th
Management Information Services Division (MISD)
of th
Unified Administrative Service (UAS)
to create th
University Information Services
department.

Landmark projects and services

EDSAC The Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) was an early British computer. Inspired by John von Neumann's seminal '' First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC'', the machine was constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the Univer ...

computer, 1949 - a pioneering

stored-program A stored-program computer is a computer that stores program instructions in electronically or optically accessible memory. This contrasts with systems that stored the program instructions with plugboards or similar mechanisms. The definition i ...

computer *

EDSAC 2 EDSAC 2 was an early computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform gene ...

computer, 1965 - first computer to have a microprogrammed CPU * Titan computer, 1966 - timeshared computer developed jointly with Ferranti subsequently marketed as the commercial Atlas 2 * Phoenix computer, 1973 - an IBM 370/165 running an IBM OS modified for improved interactive timesharing *

Exim Exim is a mail transfer agent (MTA) used on Unix-like operating systems. Exim is free software distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, and it aims to be a general and flexible mailer with extensive facilities for checking ...

mail transfer agent, 1995 - in continued open-source development and in very widespread use
Raven
authentication service, 2004 - a web-based authentication framework particularly suited to the widespread adoption across many federated institutions as at Cambridge. Extended subsequently to integrate with inter-organisational

Shibboleth A shibboleth (; hbo, , šībbōleṯ) is any custom or tradition, usually a choice of phrasing or even a single word, that distinguishes one group of people from another. Shibboleths have been used throughout history in many societies as passw ...

authentication and provide lifetime credentials known as Raven-for-life.
Lapwing
Federated Wireless platform, 2006 - provides local management via web console/APIs to 200 institutions while retaining a single network appearance with common

authentication Authentication (from ''authentikos'', "real, genuine", from αὐθέντης ''authentes'', "author") is the act of proving an assertion, such as the identity of a computer system user. In contrast with identification, the act of indicat ...

and reporting.
my.phone
user/telephony federated administration system, 2010 - providing a usable federated administrative interface to the

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Interne ...

platform to 17,000 users and 200 institutions.
IBIS
master reference data / identity management service, 2011 - provides a central common data repository with

LDAP The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP ) is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) network. Directory serv ...

and Web service API's for 300,000 members of 250 institutions, with a sophisticated federated access control model.

Directors of the University of Cambridge Computing Service

Maurice Wilkes Sir Maurice Vincent Wilkes (26 June 1913 – 29 November 2010) was a British computer scientist who designed and helped build the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC), one of the earliest stored program computers, and who ...

1945–1980 (as head of the

) * David Hartley 1970–1994 (first head of the dedicated University Computing Service) * Mike Sayers 1994–2004 * Ian Lewis 2005–2014 (final Director before the merger with MISD to create the UIS)

External links

University of Cambridge Computing Service

University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory
Organizations established in 1937 Computing Service Information technology organisations based in the United Kingdom {{UCambridge-stub

Landmark projects and services

Directors of the University of Cambridge Computing Service

See also

External links