The Northern Alberta Institute of Technology modernizes PeopleSoft in Microsoft Azure, improving resiliency and performance

The Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) is a polytechnic and applied-sciences institute in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, with four campuses and more than 34,000 students. In 2019, its key transactional support systems showed signs of strain, especially at peak traffic times, such as enrollment and the beginning of new semesters. System outages and slow performance under heavy traffic frustrated users and IT staff alike, as employees scrambled to meet the needs of the campus community.

“The beginning of a semester, especially in the fall, was a tough time of year for the IT teams,” says Daryl Allenby, Assistant Vice President of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer at NAIT. “We knew that the student information system struggled under the load and would translate to a poor student experience at a critical time in their journey.”

Four years earlier, NAIT had successfully moved its public website to Microsoft Azure, and the IT staff was impressed by the ongoing innovation of Azure services. In 2019, NAIT needed to update its payment systems, and the IT leadership saw an opportunity to implement a broader digital modernization. The institute was using Oracle PeopleSoft as its primary software for human resources (HR), finance, and student systems and decided to reach out to Microsoft for help with modernizing and migrating it to Azure.

Moving to Azure within 18 months to reduce manual processes and downtime

NAIT’s digital modernization began with a feasibility study on moving the PeopleSoft product and system operations into Azure to shrink physical infrastructure and reduce manual processes and system downtime. The team also needed to isolate its payment services to meet technical and operational standards and security requirements. NAIT’s IT leadership realized that the migration would be a significant change for the entire organization.

“There’s a certain amount of risk you have to be willing to take to improve an organization,” says Nazim Merali, Vice President of Administration and Chief Financial Officer at NAIT. “Our IT team took a huge chance, and it required a lot of courage to embark on this. But they were right on the ball in terms of where our organization needed to go.”

Within about three months, NAIT began doing proof-of-concept work and experimenting in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). It containerized the key PeopleSoft services and managed the containers using Azure DevOps. The new system had an improved security posture through Azure’s built-in security features, and the team was able to boost backup data retention for its finance department as well. The institute benefited from Microsoft’s expertise and troubleshooting as it moved through conceptualization and prepared a staged deployment.

“The Microsoft team has always been very supportive of us,” says Loren Bain, Director of Applications and Integration at NAIT. “We’ve had a lot of support in using Microsoft Azure solutions and adapting them to our needs, as well as addressing any issues that we’ve encountered.”

The IT team rolled out the new solution to HR in late 2020, to finance in early 2021, and finally to students in June 2021. Students, faculty, and other employees quickly began to experience better performance, fewer outages, and increased reliability. “Whether you’re an administrator or a student, you know that the system just runs better and is more reliable since the migration,” says Allenby.

Shifting organizational culture and reducing NAIT’s carbon footprint

NAIT’s digital modernization spurred increased productivity and a cultural change in its IT department. Rather than constantly working to keep the older system running, IT personnel could shift to learning new technologies and innovating new solutions. “For the team, it was exciting to work with new and interesting technology on Azure,” says Bain. “It was invigorating to be adopting and taking on a new approach, and it was important for our overall staff development.”

The dynamic between the IT team and NAIT senior leadership also changed, as the improved performance of the new system freed IT personnel to focus both on advancing broader business outcomes and helping NAIT achieve future goals through technological innovation. “Before the migration, our conversation with the executive team was about why the system was down or what was wrong with it,” says Allenby. “But now it’s about how IT can help change the business. It’s a more empowering conversation than we used to have.”

Moving IT into a more strategic role will allow the institute to explore additional ways to use technology for the benefit of students and teachers. NAIT is considering introducing a modern learning lab with Azure, which would facilitate future program growth. It is also looking at new ways to use the physical space that is no longer being occupied by the institute’s previous data center. “Now the conversation is about how we increase the value and contribution of technology to teaching, learning, and research,” says Allenby.

The transition to the cloud also had an unanticipated but welcome impact on NAIT’s carbon footprint. By moving the computational load from NAIT’s Alberta data center to Microsoft, the institute reduced its carbon generation. “The amount of carbon per watt that we generate from operating these systems is way less now—an advantage in Alberta, where we still use some coal for power generation,” says Allenby.

Developing new services with Microsoft to advance higher education

NAIT’s successful migration shows how legacy IT systems and products can be moved to the cloud and modernized with container technology, improving the user experience and providing more consistent and reliable service. With its maintenance burden lightened, the institute’s IT leadership now has time to consider the next steps in technological innovation and prime the organization for continued evolution.

NAIT sees its ongoing relationship with Microsoft as a key component of its evolution. “Microsoft has always been a great partner for higher education,” says Allenby. “It’s a huge corporation, but it still understands the local level. Microsoft understands our fiscal challenges, and it just genuinely appears to get higher education.”