Oracle Helps University of Central Florida Streamline Academic Administration and Keep Pace with Growth

To help streamline academic administration and to manage growth, the University of Central Florida (UCF) is using a multifaceted solution that combines Oracle software and hardware.

As the nation’s second-largest university, UCF needed a powerful, scalable and reliable IT infrastructure to support its continued growth, while also addressing a growing user preference for Web-enabled portals and self-service options.

UCF implemented Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.1 (www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/peoplesoft-enterprise/index.html) , PeopleSoft Enterprise PeopleTools 8.50 (www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/peoplesoft-enterprise/tools-tech/053978.html) , and Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Solutions (www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/peoplesoft-enterprise/campus-solutions/052356.html) running on Oracle Database 11g (www.oracle.com/database) on Oracle’s Sun servers and storage. This includes Oracle’s Sun Fire x86 clustered systems (www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/x86/index.html) , Oracle’s Sun SPARC Enterprise T-Series and M-Series servers (www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc-enterprise/index.html) running Oracle Solaris (www.oracle.com/solaris) , and Oracle’s StorageTek SL500 Modular Library System (www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/tape-storage/029141.htm) and Oracle’s StorageTek 2540 Array (www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/disk-storage/031710.htm) .

The UCF solution supports a wide-array of administrative processes, including the financials, supply chain, human resources, academic reports, online courses, class assignments and financial aid systems.

With the unparalleled reliability, availability and scalability of the Sun SPARC servers with Oracle Solaris, the UCF system is able to provide access to more than 50,000 students, faculty and staff and meet surges in demand during the busiest days of the academic year.

The StorageTek SL500 Modular Library System and StorageTek 2540 Array are two critical components of the data protection architecture.

With Oracle’s Sun hardware, UCF has reduced annual maintenance costs by more than $120,000, improved system performance by 4x, and reduced operating costs and energy consumption with efficient, space-saving servers.

UCF recently upgraded to the latest version of PeopleSoft Financial Management (www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/peoplesoft-enterprise/financial-management/052352.html) , Supply Chain Management and Customer Relationship Management (www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/peoplesoft-enterprise/crm/052431.html) (CRM), which it integrated with PeopleSoft Campus Solutions and PeopleSoft Human Capital Management, to help it maintain its cutting edge technology leadership reputation and better serve its user base, which has matured and has elevated expectations.

The university plans to leverage some of the new PeopleTools 8.50 features with its 9.1 applications in order to improve the usability and productivity of the PeopleSoft applications.

UCF worked with Oracle Advanced Customer Services for strategic guidance, architecture planning and technical support.  UCF relies on ACS for expedited response and top-priority issue resolution during peak times.

“The combination of Oracle software and hardware provides us with an innovative platform that significantly streamlines our administrative processes so students can spend more time learning and less time standing in line filling out paperwork,” said Bob Yanckello, CTO, University of Central Florida. “Oracle’s hardware provides the performance and scalability needed to ensure that students, faculty and staff have access to the system even during the most severe traffic spikes.”