Texas A&M University System Uses Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g to Facilitate Management of More Than $700 Million in Research Activity

To improve cross-organization information management and consolidate multiple legacy systems, the Texas A&M University System deployed Oracle Database 11g (www.oracle.com/us/products/database/index.html) and several components of Oracle Fusion Middleware (www.oracle.com/us/products/middleware/index.html) , including Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g (www.oracle.com/us/products/middleware/user-interaction/webcenter-suite/index.html) and Oracle Universal Content Management (www.oracle.com/us/products/middleware/content-management/ucm-overview/index.html) .

Comprised of 11 universities, seven state agencies and a comprehensive health science center, the Texas A&M University System found it difficult and time consuming to track resources for its $700 million research activities annually, as well as coordinate work across organizations and manage projects involving more than one institution.

The Oracle-powered solution, with tight integration between Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g, Oracle Universal Content Management, Oracle Database 11g and several proprietary financial systems, makes it significantly easier to manage available resources and expertise, while facilitating teamwork through a complete, open and integrated Enterprise 2.0 user interface that delivers a personalized view of system-wide research and grant information.

Researchers are also using the solution’s Enterprise 2.0 capabilities, including wikis and blogs to share information with internal and external stakeholders, which increases engagement and collaboration, and makes the research process more transparent for all constituents.

Using Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g's Oracle Composer and Oracle Business Dictionary, researchers can customize their portals without any additional coding or help from IT. This enables them to have role-based access to content and keep the most relevant information for their research projects at their fingertips.

The university system deployed the Oracle solution on a shared services model with one of the university research agencies, Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), a long-time Oracle user, developing and hosting the solution for the other agencies and institutions to reduce development and maintenance costs.

As adoption continues, the Texas A&M University System plans to roll out additional social computing tools included in Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g, such as workspaces, presence awareness, tagging and a business networking tool.

“Managing information and research projects across a number of different institutions was becoming a very costly, complex and time consuming process,” said Leonarda Horvat, Chief Information Officer and Director of Information Systems, Texas A&M University System - TEES. “To streamline this process and empower our researchers with a more dynamic and flexible user interface, we decided to deploy Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g in conjunction with Oracle Universal Content Management and Oracle Database. As a result, we have not only simplified information access, but also improved collaboration with a range of Enterprise 2.0 capabilities.”