Case Study: Villanova University achieves scalable handling of 225,000+ website requests and improved uptime with Amazon Web Services

Villanova University Scales Website After Their Buzzer Beater Win in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship

Villanova University faced a major scalability and staffing challenge when its site needed to handle unpredictable traffic spikes—from major sporting events to semester starts—while maintaining uptime and controlling the cost and overhead of onsite servers. After struggling to retain staff with the specialized skills to run their Adobe Experience Manager site, the university sought a more flexible, reliable approach.

In 2012 Villanova migrated the site to AWS with help from ICF Olson, enabling rapid scaling (from under 1,000 requests to over 225,000 on the day of their NCAA championship win), improved performance and uptime, and lower overall costs. The move also freed IT staff to focus on development and higher‑value projects, while the university adopted a utility-based budgeting model to handle usage spikes.

Villanova University

Gabe Monteleone

Assistant Vice President, University Applications and Information Systems