IDP Education analyzes data 20% faster with Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse
The global provider of international education services uses OCI to deliver near real-time insights that empower management to make better decisions.
“From the start, Oracle helped us design and deploy the ideal architecture for our requirements. We can bring data to action much more quickly than before, which enhances our ability to better understand what current and prospective students need.”
Business challenges
Operating in more than 80 countries around the world, IDP Education Services (IDP) is a co-owner of IELTS (International English Language Testing System) and other services that help people achieve their global study, work, and migration goals.
IDP used on-premises Oracle E-business Suite for financial management and Oracle Cloud EPM Planning for planning and budgeting. Gathering customer relationship management (CRM) student information was handled by third-party cloud applications. Adding financial and CRM data to the main data warehouse took up to 18 hours, limiting updates for stakeholders to only three times a week.
As data volumes grew, IDP Education faced issues with outdated data center hardware and software. This made it difficult to provision enough computing power for data analysis. In addition, costs for third-party services, a data center, and hardware leases were very high.
Oracle Cloud was an easy choice for us because it is a complete solution that deliver improved performance, resiliency, and security at a more effective price point.
Why IDP Education chose Oracle
After evaluating several potential vendors, IDP selected Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) as its cloud platform. OCI offered the most efficient capabilities for easily migrating various data analysis components to the cloud. Oracle Analytics platform would simplify the end-to-end analytics process, and Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse would improve performance while also reducing maintenance activities. Also, IDP’s technical staff was confident in OCI’s native security, performance, functionality, and reliability.
Results
After migrating to Oracle Analytics platform and Oracle ADW on OCI, IDP removed the complexity from data analysis. In this hybrid and multicloud deployment strategy, information from Oracle on-premises and cloud applications, along with data from third-party CRM applications, was consolidated within Oracle ADW. Data from all activities, boosted by data from Oracle Planning, was combined in the Oracle Analytics platform. OCI Identity and Access Management (IAM) helped to secure access and permissions to the analytics. An Azure identity management solution worked with Oracle IAM and OCI for single sign-on authentication and authorization.
Using Oracle ADW, CRM data loaded in 12 to 14 hours, representing as much as a 33% improvement in speed. Reporting, which previously was done just three times a week, now happens daily. With Oracle Analytics and Oracle ADW running on OCI, IDP enjoyed higher levels of performance and scalability while moving from a CapEx to OpEx model that more favorably aligns with its financial strategies.
About the customer
IDP Education has been a global leader in international educational services for over 50 years, helping people achieve study, work, and migration goals.