“Provided the complexity of the solution we had at RMIT and the importance of the task, we needed 110% support from Oracle Consulting and we got that.” – Obaid Mahmood, RMIT University
The challenge
After more than a dozen years in service, RMIT’s legacy Hyperion on-premises application was taking more effort to manage – but the catalyst for change was RMIT’s focus on data security.
Given this priority, RMIT was keen to act. The question was: how?
With a change in architecture, it would have been possible to address the immediate need within the legacy system. However, the university, which is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, decided to move its student planning into Oracle’s Enterprise Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (EPBCS) and decommission the legacy system previously used by the Strategic Finance Team.
RMIT University partnered with Oracle Consulting to make the change.
The results
The combined project team not only moved student planning to the Cloud but streamlined and improved some of the underlying legacy business processes.
Operational improvements have included time savings – data loads that previously took four hours a day are now completed in one hour.
While the interface is more attractive and the system faster, the user experience has remained similar enough to ensure a smooth transition for the business team, according to Obaid Mahmood, Project Manager, Infrastructure Program Management.
“The move to the Cloud has complemented RMIT’s data security approach,” says Obaid. “It’s allowed us to close out any concerns and set about decommissioning the old on-premises servers and to transfer many previous security tasks.”
The journey
The transition was initially planned as a simple ‘lift and shift’ of data from one application to another however it turned out more involved than first envisioned.
Instead of moving one year of data, RMIT decided to move data spanning back to 2011. And, on closer examination, Oracle Consulting discovered numerous intertwined non-standard business rules in use. The team also needed to time go-live to fit within specific and tight business windows that did not leave much time to resolve any unexpected issues. These and other factors combined to require a re-schedule from the first available business window to the next, however the project was delivered to budget within five months.
To speed up the migration, Oracle Consulting leveraged a proprietary tool developed by colleagues at the Oracle Global Service Center’s Automation Center of Excellence that can be used to transfer approximately 80% of artifacts and significantly cuts the degree of manual labor required.
“Provided the complexity of the solution we had at RMIT and the importance of the task, we needed 110% support from Oracle Consulting and we got that. They knew what they were doing and supported us to identify additional improvements,” Obaid reflects.
Looking to the future
Moving forward, there is potential to further increase speed and efficiency by simplifying additional business rules being used by RMIT, and to take more advantage of features within Oracle EPBCS, part of Oracle’s Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Cloud. In addition, the scalability of Cloud means the system can continue to serve RMIT’s student planning as the university and its data needs grow.
More about RMIT
RMIT is an international university of technology, design and enterprise with more than 90,000 students and over 11,000 staff globally. RMIT empowers people and communities to adapt and thrive across generations, with education, research and civic engagement that are applied, inclusive and impactful. One of Australia’s original tertiary institutions, RMIT University enjoys an international reputation for excellence in education, research, and engagement with industry and community.
Products and services
Products: Oracle Enterprise Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service
Services: Oracle Consulting Australia and New Zealand