Background
This Worldwide University System was established in 1970 to focus on higher education for the Jewish community and has since grown to serve a widely diverse population of over 19,000 students across 32 schools in five countries. From liberal arts to law to health sciences to technology, business, Jewish studies, education—and everything in between—this university provides educational opportunities and career paths to not only the most talented and motivated students but also to those who have been overlooked and underserved, who have the drive and potential to succeed.
Use Case
The university system had two unique systems which stored different university data. First was a DB2/AS400-based ERP system which hosts student information. Second, the financial aid system used a SQL server-based data storage system. In order to comply with federal student aid programs authorized under Title IV of the Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965, the university needed to keep its student data up to date, accurate, and complete within its financial aid system.
Because both systems were separate but needed to communicate with each other to keep student data consolidated and synchronized, the IT department implemented an integration solution, which was a mix of hand-coding and disparate software products. While the solution was functional in some areas, it was overall difficult to manage and maintain. For example, when a new field of student data needed to be transferred to the financial aid system, a developer would need to code for hours to implement the change.
Enter Astera Centerprise
The university needed a single solution that would integrate and maintain student data from the ERP and financial aid systems, keep the data current and accurate, and ensure that it met Title IV requirements. The solution had to enable IT to make changes to and update the data in both systems quickly and automatically, without hours of custom coding. Astera Centerprise was this solution.
Astera Centerprise is a high-performance, scalable data integration platform that allows businesses to meet today’s advanced data needs. Powered by an enterprise-grade, parallel processing engine, Centerprise offered the Worldwide University System data syncing, mapping, transformation, parsing, and extraction capabilities, all through a single platform.
Profile
This Worldwide University System serves a diverse population of 19,000 students across 32 schools in five countries.
Industry
Education
Use Case
The University had two databases—one for student information and one for financial aid. In order to keep these two systems in sync, the IT team had created a hodgepodge solution which didn’t always work and required hours of manual coding to make any changes.
Product
Astera Centerprise
Result
With Centerprise, it takes the University only a few minutes to make changes and the two systems are automatically updated daily, keeping all data complete and accurate.
After implementing Centerprise, the IT team was no longer under enormous strain when moving data from the student system to the financial aid system. Thanks to its superior usability, Centerprise integration projects were easily designed in a matter of hours and modifying the system took only a few minutes. With the Centerprise built-in scheduler, student data from the ERP system was sent to the financial aid system every night, keeping the data complete and accurate.
Astera provided a complete solution in a single interface that met all the university’s technical data integration needs and was affordable for a non-profit educational institution. Centerprise’s advanced data extraction and transformation capabilities allowed the university to overcome its challenges for keeping both systems updated, and the Centerprise scheduler automated the transfer of data between both systems, keeping them in sync.