Microsoft Azure used to track pandemic data at Aussie uni.
Data-rich information platforms has become a critical pillar in the way that Australian-based Flinders University is managing the Coronavirus situation derives from its.
According to the Uni, the information platforms allow it to closely monitor the impact of its decisions on students and share that information with key executives who can use the insights to plan and optimise decision making.
The information can also be delivered to university personnel who are working remotely in order to limit the health risk of the coronavirus.
To preserve the wellbeing of staff and students in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Flinders University announced in mid-March 2020 that lectures would no longer take place on campus and would be delivered online.
Luke Havelberg associate director, Planning and Analytical Services at Flinders University said if you have too much of a vacuum around information people tend to fill it themselves.
“If we take a week or a week and a half – people start to fill that. But now we know what the data shows. We are not running on rumour or unsupported observations – we have got to make sure information is quick, timely and confident,” he said.
To overcome this Flinders University deployed a Microsoft Azure based platform that provides immediate access to critical information when and where it is needed.
Using Azure Data Factory, Databricks and Power BI the University will be able to track key data which can then be used to model revenues and plans. Through the University-wide deployment of Office 365 that data can then be shared to key personnel using SharePoint, Livetiles and Teams.
According to Havelberg the integration across the Microsoft ecosystem is particularly important to ensure insights can be made available when and where they are needed, in a way that is familiar to users.
Flinders is leveraging about 20 services across the Microsoft stack to ingest, enrich, transform data and to model, visualise and publish insights. It has also developed support a responsive and agile way of working across the University.
The platform has proved an important ally during the COVID-19 pandemic as Flinders acts to protect students and staff and respond to Government requirements regarding public gatherings, said Havelberg.
“We have been able to respond to information requests around students, from international numbers to the impact of the move to online lectures, and inform the scenarios planning for the University,” he said. “We can turn that around much faster than before, often in hours. We would have been scrambling to do it on the old platform and would not have as much confidence in the results either.”
The technology has enabled the delivery of information to the right people at the right time – sometimes everyone in a group, sometimes a subset, as Teams and Power BI allows data to be filtered to the groups as required, said Havelberg.
“This promotes collaboration and supports teams as they work remotely,” he said. “Thinking about what the Uni needed from us and working backwards from there.”
Havelberg’s team was continuously building out self–service capability through the Flinders intelligence portal (Flip).
“Over time that will be the one-stop–shop for anything intelligence related at Flinders. It will swallow up other information from different areas and be mobile friendly,” he said. “It will be a game changer moving forward.”
The analytics platform was delivered with support from Microsoft partners Empired to build the Azure platform foundations; and Expose Data to support important governance related aspects of the new Microsoft analytics ecosystem. Microsoft FastTrack worked with Flinders to ensure a speedy deployment and rapid time to value.
Established in South Australia in 1966, Flinders University has forged a strong reputation and has a cohort of around 25,000 students – including more than 5,000 international students.
