University Graduates to Modern Cloud System

This New England private university has nearly 15,000 undergraduate and graduate students. They have been our client for a decade.

Our Client

Challenge

The client does not have a large IT budget. Over the last 10 years, Prolifics has provided staff augmentation and helped out with small projects like data quality initiatives and upgrades to their existing systems. This IT department mainly works with university data in areas such as student services, including student registrations and textbook purchases by the university. Because these on-premises, legacy systems were no longer able to accept the enhancements needed to align to the client’s data integration and governance requirements, they decided to move to a cloud environment.

Greg Kordelski is Prolifics Director – Client Success and works with our client. “There’s a large amount of migration work that will need to take place – somewhere in the area of 10,000 jobs at some point. We knew they did not have the capabilities or the staff in place to do that amount of work. So, our strategy was to get a new configuration in place as best, and as quickly, as we possibly could.” This new configuration would set the foundation for the migrations to come, when the client was ready to do so.

Action

The client had older versions of IBM software. We recommended moving them to IBM’s Cloud Pak for Data, which would bring the majority of their environment to a newer platform, on the cloud, under the IBM umbrella.

Prolifics presented a “proof of technology” over a seven-week period. In that time frame we were able to illustrate the tools and capabilities of the newly upgraded systems, and that it would perform all the functions the client needed.

Result

We are implementing and configuring. Staying within the IBM family and upgrading to Cloud Pak for Data means the migration of the client’s existing jobs will translate nicely. If they were to switch to a non-IBM product, they’d have a much larger refactoring approach that would need to take place, with redesigned jobs and additional resources to implement the new product.

We also utilized our dedicated IP accelerators. “With some Prolifics accelerators, the client will be able to just ingest the jobs with some minor tweaks,” said Kordelski, “It’ll be a big effort as far as quantity, but it won’t be as large an effort as far as redesign.”

The move to the cloud will bring greater speed and efficiency to student services, with the ultimate expected outcome of higher student satisfaction scores.

Technology

The client used an on-premises version of IBM InfoSphere Information Server, a data integration platform to monitor and transform data using massively parallel processing (MPP) capabilities.

We worked with the client and IBM on their existing licensing and entitlements to upgrade the client to IBM Cloud Pak for Data, which brings data management, data governance, data science and AI capabilities together on a single intuitive, integrated and unified cloud platform. Cloud Pak for Data includes a wide selection of IBM products and services, such as Watson Knowledge catalog, a data catalog tool for modeling and analysis that our client will now use.

The Cloud Pak for Data installation and configuration will include:

• Architectural design
• Server configuration
• Operating system configuration
• Open Shift installation
• Cloud Pak for Data (CP4D) Base Plane installation

• CP4D Watson Knowledge Catalog installation
• CP4D DataStage Installation
• Connectivity and configuration
• “Smoke testing” (build verification testing)
• Documentation and mentoring

• Support as required and hours allowed for DataStage migration
• Installation build book
• Smoke test report

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About Prolifics

Prolifics is a global digital engineering and consulting firm helping clients navigate and accelerate their digital transformation journeys. We deliver relevant outcomes using our systematic approach to rapid, enterprise-grade continuous innovation. We treat our digital deliverables like a customized product – using agile practices to deliver immediate and ongoing increases in value.

We provide consulting, engineering and managed services for all our practice areas — Data & AI, Integration & Applications, Business Automation, DevXOps, Test Automation, and Cybersecurity across multiple industries — at any point our clients need them. Visit prolifics.com to learn more.