June 25, 2020 – David Kent Consulting (David Kent) has completed Messiah College’s (Messiah’s) migration of their Ellucian Banner ERP system, including all integrated partner applications, to Oracle’s Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Working collaboratively, the Messiah IT Team and the David Kent Cloud Solutions Team architected, designed, and migrated the entire ERP technology stack in under five (5) months.
With its bold move to cloud computing, Messiah will see an immediate impact on operating expenditures—paying only for resources used. More importantly, the cloud computing infrastructure is inherently adaptable and resilient, which ensures that the institution’s critical and ever-evolving business applications are always available to faculty, staff, and students.
The David Kent Cloud Solutions Team created the architecture, design and code to build the Messiah cloud solution using a process called “Infrastructure as Code” (IaC). By using IaC, the Banner cloud infrastructure will deliver a stable platform with an agility that scales and contracts based on actual workload requirements, thus saving the institution money by elastically adding and subtracting resources on demand.
Additional benefits of the Ellucian Banner cloud migration include increased security, true disaster recovery, business continuity, reduced risk, and reduced annual hardware and software licensing costs. Messiah’s new cloud design also reduces downtime required for software upgrades and maintenance, giving IT staff more time to perform system upgrades and implement new application features. Vacated on-premises servers will be repurposed for other critical needs.
Messiah chose the David Kent team due to the breadth and subject matter expertise in both public cloud migrations and Ellucian Banner products. Messiah and David Kent consultants worked collaboratively throughout the project. This coordination between the two teams increased knowledge transfer, the capacity to execute the project, and the timeliness of bringing the project to completion. Bill Strausbaugh, VP for Information Technology, shared that “David Kent consultants provided the human and knowledge resources our staff needed to make a project of this magnitude and uniqueness both feasible and manageable during even the height of COVID crisis. We could not be happier with the level of cooperation, insightful problem solving, and project management we received.”
Messiah College, a private Christian college of the liberal and applied arts and sciences, enrolls 3,375 undergraduate and graduate students. Founded in 1909 and located near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Messiah awards undergraduate bachelor’s degrees in more than 85 majors and offers more than 35 graduate degrees and certificate programs. As Messiah College becomes Messiah University on July 1, 2020, the move to the Cloud positions the institution for the infrastructure needs of the future.
With the inherent stability, reliability, and superior price-performance ratio of public cloud infrastructure, colleges and universities are beginning to see handsome returns by migrating critical applications to public cloud and hybrid cloud solutions. The David Kent Cloud Solutions Team delivers high-quality results while ensuring client IT staff have the skills and confidence to administer their newly-migrated systems. To learn more about how David Kent Consulting can help with your Ellucian Banner, Oracle, and Cloud Infrastructure needs, email davidkent@davidkentconsulting.com or call 872.529.5368.
