La Trobe moves student management to the cloud

Melbourne’s La Trobe University will migrate its core student management system to a cloud-based TechnologyOne platform in a further expansion of the organisation's move away from owned and operated infrastructure.

La Trobe’s student system is one of the most business critical IT functions it runs. The university has partnered with TechnologyOne since 2006, and has now signed up to utilise its software-as-service solution for higher education.

La Trobe CIO Peter Nikoletatos said students would see the difference once they are able to access “anywhere, anytime, any device capability, seamless real-time integration and flexibility in academic program management”.

Online student services will be accessible from all platforms, including smartphones and tablets, under the new arrangement. Services will receive 'mobile first' design treatment.

The new deal is also expected to get La Trobe around the headache of having to provision its back-end for the predictable peak in load its student services experience at the start of each semester.

The university is boasting that it is the first higher education organisation in Australia to shift its core student management systems to a “a true SaaS platform”.

The same TechOne product has already been deployed in the UK’s University of Exeter, University of Lincoln, and the University of South Wales.

Last year the La Trobe also completed the move of its finance systems to SAP’s cloud-based business suite S/4HANA.

It is now working on doing the same for the rest of the ERP portfolio.