Valorem Reply UK worked with one of England’s leading research universities to provide a cloud-based integration platform. This platform supports their evolving business as they build upon their heritage to provide an excellent student experience, embracing the future by focusing on digital transformation.
One of the strategic objectives for the university is to consolidate excellent teaching and continue to improve the student experience, responding to students’ growing expectations of enhanced academic quality, support services, facilities, accommodation and pathways to employment. A key aspect in meeting this objective is to have a modern integration solution providing interfaces between the core university systems providing services for both students and staff.
Initially Valorem Reply UK undertook an integration design workshop, from which an integration strategy and architecture was recommended. This led to an engagement to architect and deliver an Azure integration solution using the Valorem Reply UK’s QuickConnect Framework, working closely with the University’s in house development team.
The Valorem and University teams worked collaboratively throughout the delivery until the last element of the legacy integration platform had been migrated. The in-house development team continue to extend the integration solution, with Valorem Reply providing ongoing consultancy when required.
Throughout this project we worked in close partnership with the University team. As well as successfully delivering the solution, we watched the in-house team mature in their understanding of cloud and become proficient with Azure Integration Services." - Sandra Smith, Manager, Valorem UK
CHALLENGES & OPPORTUNITIES
- Legacy integration solution had evolved ad-hoc, with an inconsistent approach
- Customer facing growing licensing costs for legacy solution
- Desire for a cloud first strategy
- Upskilling of in-house University team
SOLUTIONS
The integration solution needed to be able to respond to changes in university priorities, offering flexibility and adaptability to offer a continued level of service for the staff and students, minimizing educational impact. Ensuring that the core student and staff information held in SITS as the Master Data repository is automatically and reliably reflected in other university systems such as the virtual learning system which is instrumental in delivering a quality service.
Valorem Reply UK implemented an Azure hosted Enterprise Integration Platform as a Service solution for the university. Based upon an Enterprise Service Bus architecture, the solution delivers efficient integration providing resilience and flexibility; a foundation upon which future integration requirements can be delivered. Using Valorem Reply’s QuickConnect accelerator kickstarted the solution development, and took advantage of the core components that are pre-tested and ready to use. The team were able to both migrate integrations from the existing Oracle integration solution and extend it to support exciting new initiatives within the university.
The engagement was delivered in line with Valorem Reply UK’s proven capability enhancement model, with the initial development undertaken by their developers, then moving to a hybrid development team which included team members from the university, and finally transitioning to a point where the university in house team could lead the delivery with just support and guidance from Valorem Reply UK.
RESULTS
- All legacy integrations migrated achieving significant reduction of license costs
- A flexible integration platform delivered, which the university continue to build upon and extend
- Successful upskilling of the university team
