Canadian university moves its entire operational footprint to the cloud in six months to deliver new online experiences for students around the world

SEATTLE—September 23, 2020 – Today, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ: AMZN), announced that Athabasca University (AU), Canada’s only public, digital university, successfully migrated its entire IT infrastructure to the world’s leading cloud in just six months. AU moved out of its data center, which was located in a fire prone zone in Northern Alberta, migrating all of its operational systems, including its learning management system (LMS) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) system (admissions, registration, billing, academic records, payroll, etc.) to AWS. AU supports more than 43,000 students in 87 countries, and is the first university in Canada to be fully in the cloud. AU has trained more than 400 of its staff on cloud technology and is offering the AWS Academy Cloud Computing Curriculum online —the only school in Canada to do so via the AU PowerED and AWS Digital Transformation Leadership Certificate in Cloud.

AU’s move to the cloud improved the resiliency of its data to natural disasters, and bad actors, but the university also estimates it will save $16 million over the next five years by running its operations in the cloud. The AU IT team, working together with AWS Professional Services, used VMware Cloud on AWS—a service that enables companies to seamlessly migrate their on-premises VMware environments to AWS, and CloudEndure Migration, offered by AWS,—to migrate applications not hosted on VMware. CloudEndure Migration enables an ongoing replication of the source server(s) to Amazon Elastic Compute 2 (EC2) until the planned cutover events, reducing risk and simplifying the migration. AU is now in the process of organizing datasets to use machine learning to uncover insights, such as how students are navigating classes and making recommendations based on their activities.

Though the university is fully online, about 40% of employees still work in a physical location, so when the COVID-19 pandemic forced people to work from home, AU had to quickly get their team secure access to its systems. Within 24 hours of the local’s government’s shelter in place, AU used Amazon WorkSpaces to begin deploying newly imaged laptops to employees, ensuring minimal disruption to the learning environment. The pandemic added additional demand for courses as well, with the school recording a more than 10% spike in registrations—all easily handled with the elasticity the AWS environment enables. Since migrating all its systems to AWS, learners and employees have reported better speed and reliability, even with the additional strains on some home internet systems.

“There is no innovation at scale without a solid foundation. Not only are we experimenting with data lakes and improved analytics, but now we can also tap AWS’s full array of cloud services to build an internal research network to enable our researchers to harness compute power in an affordable and accessible way,” said Jennifer Schaeffer, AU Vice President of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer. “Moving to the cloud has given us the ability to rewrite the future of education, and give learners and AU team members access to technology that will help them innovate teaching approaches, research, and learner support services.”

“AU’s accomplishments this year are remarkable, not only for the speed and dedication of the team to complete the migration, but also to do so during a global pandemic,” said Jeff Kratz, General Manager, Worldwide Public Sector at AWS for Latin American, Canada, and the Caribbean. “This migration marks a first in Canada, with AU being the first university to migrate all-in to the cloud. It paves the way for other institutions to have confidence to accelerate their own digital transformations.”

About Amazon Web Services
For 14 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers over 175 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 77 Availability Zones (AZs) within 24 geographic regions, with announced plans for nine more Availability Zones and three more AWS Regions in Indonesia, Japan, and Spain. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.

About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit www.amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.
About Athabasca University
Athabasca University (AU), Canada’s Online University is one of the world’s foremost and fastest-growing online and open education institutions, serving more than 43,000 students across 87 countries. AU is the fifth largest university in Canada and one of four Comprehensive Research and Teaching Universities in Alberta. AU offers online Bachelors, Masters, and PhD programs alongside online courses for personal and professional development. It is uniquely founded on the principles of flexibility and openness, giving learners control over their studies so they can obtain higher education whenever and whenever it is right for them. For more information, please visit: www.athabascau.ca.