A Smooth Transition to the Cloud

A large university’s school of veterinary medicine (SVM) prides itself on its teaching and research capabilities, offering extensive learning resources to its students, faculty, and staff. One key resource is a pet hospital database, which houses information on the diagnosis and treatment of animals from 500 hospitals in 44 states. The information is used to promote evidence-based veterinary healthcare; evaluate health outcomes; characterize the frequency and distribution of disease; and provide early warning of emerging infectious diseases. But analysts were not able to access this valuable data fast enough. With custom development in SAS and ESRI, the database required programming expertise and extensive time to write and run programs. The SVM needed to: • Increase speed of reporting and analysis • Eliminate complex programming to access data • Make the database user-friendly • Expand graphical and geostatistical data presentation to enhance analysis capabilities • Share research among veterinary schools and clinics and develop collaboration among industry experts for experiments, research, and disease control

The client knew it had gaps in its interactive marketing but didn’t have the talent on staff to fill the gaps, nor the time to manage it. The client’s flagship website needed improvement in its information architecture and navigation, as well as an upgrade in its content management system. The client had no social media plan. It wasn’t using data from analytics to drive decision-making, because staff wasn’t up to speed on the newest tools and approaches. There were a few consultants working in interactive marketing, but in a piecemeal structure that required significant management from the client and wasn’t driving results.

The country’s largest community college system, with 113 campuses across the state, was running many simultaneous technology integration projects to support major statewide education initiatives. Some of the goals were to integrate student data from all 113 campuses; expedite student graduation timelines; and to improve online education, education planning, and common assessment capabilities. The client needed a partner to plan and execute the massive set of implementation projects.