Case Study: Edith Cowan University achieves full cloud transformation and cost-efficient agility with Atos

Setting new standards for universities in the cloud

Edith Cowan University (ECU), a public university of about 23,000 students in Perth, faced rising costs and capacity limits from two aging on‑campus data centers, plus strict requirements for resilience, data sovereignty and low‑latency access for remote students. After a competitive tender ECU selected Atos to deliver a full-cloud transformation using its Managed Hybrid (multi‑tenant) Cloud and Atos Canopy Hybrid Cloud Orchestration Service, with Atos building twin data centers in Perth to meet local data‑sovereignty needs.

Atos migrated ECU’s entire IT estate to a secure, fully managed cloud—using an EMC/VMware architecture, 24x7 operations, disaster recovery and a 99.9% infrastructure availability SLA—and completed the move within an 18‑month programme under a five‑year managed service. The Atos solution delivered measurable results: ECU became the first Australian university to move all IT to the cloud, cut capital IT spend, gained elastic capacity and faster time‑to‑market for new services, improved cost visibility and enabled broader access for students (including overseas), while retaining data sovereignty through the Perth data centres.

Edith Cowan University

Arshad Omari

Professor, Deputy Vice-Chancellor