Rockhurst University - A Seamless Journey to the Oracle® Cloud
About the College
Rockhurst University is a private Catholic university of Jesuit tradition located in Kansas City, Missouri. The university adheres to the traditional Ignatian philosophy of educating students not only in academics but also in service and leadership. Rockhurst University offers over fifty graduate and undergraduate programs, serving over 3,000 students annually. Rockhurst is a comprehensive university and supportive community committed to providing inclusive, innovative, and transformative education.
Objective
Rockhurst University relentlessly works towards the mission to make higher education accessible for its students to improve lives and make the world a better place. Rockhurst University faced a profound digital performance gap in delivering self-service capabilities to its students owing to an aging on-premise Banner® management system.
Driven by the need to enable modern experiences for students and institutional stakeholders and achieve the required scalability to measure up to their evolving needs, Rockhurst University collaborated with OculusIT to move their entire systems and workloads to the Oracle® Cloud.
Quick Facts
- Founded: March 18, 1968
- President: Rev. Thomas B. Curran
- Location: Kansas City, Missouri 64110
- Accreditation: The Higher Learning Commission (HLC)
- Enrollment: 3,405
- Mission: To make decisions in the light of what is truly for the greater glory of God
For further information, please visit
www.rockhurst.edu
Challenge
A thorough analysis of Rockhurst University’s current on-premise IT environment revealed numerous inefficiencies directly impacting the students. Some of the technical performance challenges faced by the university included:
- Redundant IT hardware unable to sustain the current Banner® infrastructure
- The university lacked time, skill, and workforce to run Banner® on-premise
- Dependence on costly third-party hosting and managed services providers
OculusIT collaborated with Rockhurst University in March 2021 to plan a seamless migration roadmap. The services’ depth, scope, and flexibility enthralled the university top-brass, making a compelling case to partner with OculusIT to move their critical workloads such as Banner® production and non production environments to the Oracle®Cloud.
Solution
After the initial phase of requirement gathering, OculusIT deployed its core technical team to define the scope, plan, and execute the entire migration process. Our experts designed detailed workflows for the Rockhurst team to plan for the transition and the services provided to the university include:
Migration & Transition:
OculusITTM migrated the university’s Banner® to the Cloud and now supports their entire environment. Our team provides end-to-end support for the latest upgrades, including Banner® 9 implementation and go-live support.
Project Management:
Post the migration, OculusIT assigned a dedicated Project Manager to manage all the key activities. The key activities include communications, change management, escalations, request management, incident management, oversight for monitoring the SLA, sharing performance reports regularly, performing root cause analysis, and maintaining a link between Rockhurst University and OculusIT staff for proactive communication on service delivery performance.
Operating System Administration:
- Installing and configuring the OS environments for the university’s systems
- Performing local system-level account administration for OS
environments - Maintaining access to and control of special user accounts used for OS administration
- Installing patches/updates from the applicable vendor for OS environments
Database and Application Administration:
- Installing, configuring, and upgrading database environments for
vendor-specific systems - Performing database system-level security administration
- Performing periodic log review and analysis to determine the stability of the databases and application environment
- Providing troubleshooting and diagnostic support for the databases, database instances and homes
- Third-Party Integrations and 24×7 Incident Management
Benefits and Continuous Support from OculusITTM
Academic institutions are constantly outgrowing their ERP systems and moving towards budget-friendly, end-to-end technology solutions in the Cloud. OculusIT has extended a pool of resources to the university at the minimum cost of one subscription, helping Rockhurst University consolidate their entire ERP expertise and accountability under one SPOC, along with helping them achieve 50% cost optimization. By moving to the Cloud, Rockhurst University avoided all extra expenditure on their internal infrastructure, leading to a total ROI of $200,000 in cost savings.
OculusIT believes in following a streamlined change management process. The team helped Rockhurst University ensure that proper approvals are requested from the change advisory board, wherever necessary, leading to zero risks during the actual production. The technical staff at OculusIT works round the clock to ensure that Rockhurst University focuses on its primary academic goals. The team’s continuous efforts aimed to provide the university with industry best practices across a wide range of services. The subject matter experts, being well-equipped to deal with Banner® 8, Banner® 9, and any third-party integration, continuously support the university to discover better solutions.