Download PDF
University of Maryland College Uses Attunity Software to Replicate Data to the AWS Cloud
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Big Data Analytics
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Databases
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
Applicable Industries
- Education
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- Data Science Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
University of Maryland University College (UMUC) was facing the challenge of organizing and deriving insights from four core datasets, totaling 10 terabytes. These datasets included data related to online student activities, student enrollments, financials, and customer relationship management. The data was stored in a mix of on-premises Oracle and SQL Server databases, Salesforce, and other cloud-based service applications. UMUC’s challenge was to aggregate these disparate data sources, normalize the data, and then load it into a data warehouse for analysis. This was a classic ‘data integration challenge’ that included extracting data from source systems, staging the data in a relational database and applying transformations, loading data into a data warehouse, and running analytics and providing a visualization layer.
About The Customer
University of Maryland University College (UMUC) is an institution that provides quality education at an affordable cost to busy professionals. The majority of their students are adults who are juggling work and families and, often times, military service. Like other providers of higher education, UMUC faces increasing pressure to attract the best students and supply a quality education at the right price. To stay ahead of the curve, colleges and universities must ultimately seek a competitive advantage, constantly identifying opportunities for improvement. To achieve this, UMUC launched a big data strategy on the strengths of Amazon Web Services.
The Solution
UMUC selected Amazon Redshift for its data warehouse, citing its high performance and low cost. To address the data integration challenge, UMUC turned to the AWS Marketplace and chose Attunity for Amazon Redshift. In the past, UMUC was using Oracle Streams to collect data from Oracle Databases and load it into an Operational Data Store (ODS) for transformation using Oracle Data Integrator (ODI), before ultimately loading into a data warehouse for analysis. However, some of the data sources are located on Microsoft SQL Server databases and Oracle Streams is not able to load from non-Oracle databases. To work around this challenge, the team at UMUC had to manually extract data from their SQL Server databases and combine it with their Oracle source data–a time-consuming process. UMUC leveraged Attunity software to both speed up their data movement and have a single point of management for all data movement. This gives the University greater visibility and flexibility when they choose to add or remove data sources or targets in the future.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
IoT platform Enables Safety Solutions for U.S. School Districts
Designed to alert drivers when schoolchildren are present, especially in low-visibility conditions, school-zone flasher signals are typically updated manually at each school. The switching is based on the school calendar and manually changed when an unexpected early dismissal occurs, as in the case of a weather-event altering the normal schedule. The process to reprogram the flashers requires a significant effort by school district personnel to implement due to the large number of warning flashers installed across an entire school district.
Case Study
Revolutionizing Medical Training in India: GSL Smart Lab and the LAP Mentor
The GSL SMART Lab, a collective effort of the GSL College of Medicine and the GSL College of Nursing and Health Science, was facing a challenge in providing superior training to healthcare professionals. As clinical medicine was becoming more focused on patient safety and quality of care, the need for medical simulation to bridge the educational gap between the classroom and the clinical environment was becoming increasingly apparent. Dr. Sandeep Ganni, the director of the GSL SMART Lab, envisioned a world-class surgical and medical training center where physicians and healthcare professionals could learn skills through simulation training. He was looking for different simulators for different specialties to provide both basic and advanced simulation training. For laparoscopic surgery, he was interested in a high fidelity simulator that could provide basic surgical and suturing skills training for international accreditation as well as specific hands-on training in complex laparoscopic procedures for practicing physicians in India.
Case Study
Implementing Robotic Surgery Training Simulator for Enhanced Surgical Proficiency
Fundacio Puigvert, a leading European medical center specializing in Urology, Nephrology, and Andrology, faced a significant challenge in training its surgical residents. The institution recognized the need for a more standardized and comprehensive training curriculum, particularly in the area of robotic surgery. The challenge was underscored by two independent studies showing that less than 5% of residents in Italian and German residency programs could perform major or complex procedures by the end of their residency. The institution sought to establish a virtual reality simulation lab that would include endourological, laparoscopic, and robotic platforms. However, they needed a simulator that could replicate both the hardware and software of the robotic Da Vinci console used in the operating room, without being connected to the actual physical console. They also required a system that could provide both basic and advanced simulation training, and a metrics system to assess the proficiency of the trainees before they performed surgical procedures in the operating theater.
Case Study
Edinburgh Napier University streamlines long-distance learning with Cisco WebEX
• Geographically dispersed campus made in-person meetings costly and inconvenient.• Distance-learning programs in Malaysia, India, and China required dependable, user-friendly online tools to maximize interaction in collaborative workspaces.• Virtual learning environment required a separate sign-in process, resulting in a significant administrative burden for IT staff and limited adoption of collaboration technology.
Case Study
8x increased productivity with VKS
Before VKS, a teacher would spend a lot of time showing a group of 22 students how to build a set of stairs within a semester of 120 hours. Along with not leaving the teacher much time to provide one-on-one support for each student to properly learn carpentry, it also left a considerable amount of room for error. Key information would be misinterpreted or lost as the class was taught in the typical show-and-tell way.
Case Study
Scalable IoT Empowering GreenFlex's Sustainable Growth
GreenFlex, a company that supports sustainable development, decarbonization, and energy efficiency, faced several challenges in its quest to expand its business. The company needed to deploy a robust and sustainable IoT technology to support its growth. It was crucial for them to monitor and control devices at customer sites in a safe and reliable manner. They also needed to integrate devices across a range of communication protocols and gather and act on data to meet efficiency targets. GreenFlex had previously built IoT capabilities into its digital platform, GreenFlexIQ, to monitor and manage customer sites remotely. However, they soon realized that they needed a new platform to support their ambitions. They needed a platform that could scale to connect more devices for production management and make it easier for the operations team to manage devices in the field.
