Dell Boomi’s integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) is being used by Adelaide’s Flinders University to enable a connected environment as the university begins to execute its five-year digital strategy through to 2021.
According to Boomi, the primary objective driving the university’s strategy to migrate to its platform is to provide a personalised and customised education experience to each of its 26,000 students throughout their entire journey – from prospect to graduate.
Under the contract, Flinders will also leverage the Boomi Master Data Management Cloud, managed from the same Boomi integration platform, so it can accurately map this journey by ensuring data is consistent and up-to-date across a diverse range of applications regardless of where the data was initially collected.
“Flinders’ digital strategy will result in the widespread use of cloud services to optimise and enhance learning for our students no matter the study they are completing,” said Kelvin McCarthy, solution architect, information and digital solutions, Flinders University.
{loadposition peter}“But introducing cloud-based apps is just the first step. We need a way to connect those apps with one another so we can provide a unified experience for users – that’s where Boomi comes in.
“Boomi’s integration capabilities ensure these apps operate concurrently and consistently so that students can learn through a modernised environment that is accessible on their terms – on mobile, at any time, and from any location.”
Boomi says Flinders selected its solution following a tender process in which it went to market looking for a combination of traditional ESB-style integration, APIs, and MDM.
Future phases of Flinders’ Boomi project will see it use the Boomi MDM Cloud — launched in Australia in July — to aggregate student data from multiple sources.
“If we can’t understand the student, what stage in their learning journey they are, and what they need, we can’t optimise the services we offer them, nor can we propose further opportunities,” McCarthy said.
“We have the Student Management System, Learning Management System, alumni management system and a plethora of other applications which contain chunks of information about every student. That’s a lot of data, and if it isn’t synchronised, it can cause significant conflicts.
"With Boomi, we can have confidence in data accuracy as all information stored by our apps will be handled by the MDM platform in the cloud. This type of accuracy and real-time access helps us better understand the student journey, and will become increasingly important the further we progress along our digital roadmap.”
“Today’s students, most of whom would be digital natives, expect more than competency-based learning – they want a unique, tech-enabled experience that fits their aspirations and is shaped around their schedules,” said Michael Evans, managing director APJ, Dell Boomi.
“Using Boomi’s cloud-native platform to connect applications and maintain data integrity, Flinders can analyse the needs of its students and seamlessly align the learning experiences it offers to those demands.”