University of Worcester plans move to the cloud with Oracle

published 10 May 2019

The University of Worcester has announced plans to migrate its core financial systems to the cloud, in a move it hopes will help boost efficiency, productivity and accuracy of data processing.

The institution has experienced rapid growth of late and now boasts a student population of around 11,000. With a reputation for its teaching - it is ranked number one in the UK and 26th globally when it comes to quality in education, according to the Times Higher Education World University rankings - it is looking to further support this growth with technology.

Oracle has been selected as the vendor of choice, with the university aiming to deploy its ERP Cloud - which claims to increase control and reduce costs among other things - in addition to its EPM Cloud, which it hopes will provide the agility and flexibility it needs as the organisation evolves.

"We’re absolutely committed to ensuring that our students and staff have the very best learning and working experience while they are at the University of Worcester," said Paul Guest, principal project manager, University of Worcester.

"A cornerstone of this commitment is having robust IT systems that help us work in smarter and faster ways. Moving to the cloud will allow us to do this, and ultimately help us to continue to grow as an organisation."

Oracle partner, Namos Solutions, will work on the project as well as providing wider support as part of a five-year managed service contract. The firm is a Platinum-level Cloud Excellence Implementer (CEI) member of the Oracle Partner Network (OPN).

"The University of Worcester is a prime example of how an educational institution can make use of cloud technologies to support growth and innovation," added Debbie Green, vice president of applications at Oracle UK.

"With Oracle ERP Cloud, the university will be able to effectively leverage the data it holds and work in a more efficient way, allowing it to really focus on growth and the curriculum that it provides to students."

Maggie has been a journalist since 1999, starting her career as an editorial assistant on then-weekly magazine Computing, before working her way up to senior reporter level. In 2006, just weeks before ITPro was launched, Maggie joined Dennis Publishing as a reporter. Having worked her way up to editor of ITPro, she was appointed group editor of CloudPro and ITPro in April 2012. She became the editorial director and took responsibility for ChannelPro, in 2016.

Her areas of particular interest, aside from cloud, include management and C-level issues, the business value of technology, green and environmental issues and careers to name but a few.