Client
University of Western Australia
Scope of work
Industry
Higher Education

Overview

The University of Western Australia (UWA) is located in Perth, on the land of the Whadjuk Nation. The university opened in 1913 and has more than 25,000 students enrolled from 100 countries. It is a leading global university renowned for excellence in education and research and is ranked in the world’s top 100.

The university comprises 22 schools where passionate lecturers with real industry experience and connections support students’ learning journeys. It is number one in WA for graduate employability.

UWA partners with Atturra to deliver a complementary hybrid cloud managed service that provides real-time value.

Fast Facts

  • Transition from hosted data centre, to on-prem, to a hybrid cloud solution.
  • Compute storage up to the hypervisor layer.
  • Integrated managed services for UWA’s data centre hosted platform.

“Atturra’s engagement with UWA’s UniIT team is a partnership. It’s not your typical managed service; it’s a one-team approach. They’re on the floor with us, facing the same problems in real time and collaborating to find and execute a solution. Their alignment with our culture, day-to-day contribution, and support on larger projects such as the transition to the hybrid cloud have been a significant and valuable contribution to the success of our digital transformation.”

Pete Seddon,
CIO, UWA

Business Opportunity

UWA was engaged with an external hosted solution provider for its data centre, compute and storage service. As a research university, UWA’s largest data component is related to its research data store. Every research grant has different rules regarding the time data must be stored, meaning most grant-related data is never deleted. It is also its most significant asset, estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars. As the data store grew, so did the storage cost.

As part of the university’s digital transformation roadmap, it identified the need to regain control of its data by transitioning away from the current solution and utilising the latest cloud technologies to save on costs, make the data more accessible to researchers and increase its security. Due to internal mobility and technological advancements, UWA recognised it had lost internal capability and no longer had the skills to monitor and manage the data centre.

UWA’s internal IT team—UniIT, have worked with Atturra on the transition plan, build and run since 2018.

Solution

The strategy was divided into three stages. Stage one involved initially bringing everything back on-prem. This was a temporary solution as the on-site data centre required an upgrade.

Now that UWA had control of its data, stage two involved transitioning to a hosted data centre with a hybrid cloud solution, utilising both private and public cloud. This comprised of:

  • transition technical approach
  • establishing operational processes
  • forming an integrated team
  • completing acceptance testing of the DC Hosting Platform.

With the data successfully moved, stage three saw the Atturra Managed Services team integrated into the UniIT team to monitor and manage the data centre platform, including VMware vCentre environment, Cisco UCS Compute, Pure Storage and the Commvault backup system.

Throughout the project, Atturra collaborated closely with the UniIT team to overcome any hurdles and find a way forward, whether that was applying additional resources, bringing in increased capability, or changing the direction or velocity of the project.

Outcomes achieved

The successful transition of UWA’s data centre, compute, and storage service to a hybrid cloud solution that meets budgetary requirements is an important milestone on its digital roadmap. It has enabled the university to leverage advanced technologies that help de-risk and ensure its data is secure, resulting in improved data and service availability, increased capability, and laying the foundation for continuous improvement.

With an embedded managed services team, UWA has a technology solutions partner on the ground that complements its internal team and delivers real-time value.

Technologies

  • Cisco Compute ACI & Networking
  • Pure Storage
  • Commvault Data Management
  • VMWare Hypervisor & NSX
  • Azure Cloud
  • Dell Compute

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