Case Study: Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico achieves academic continuity after Hurricane Maria with Microsoft Azure

After Hurricane Maria, Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico guarantees academic continuity with the cloud

Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico, a 4,500‑student institution and the largest private engineering school serving the Hispanic population in the U.S. and its territories, faced a critical challenge when Category 5 Hurricane Maria struck in September 2017, knocking out power and communications across the island. Having begun a cloud migration program years earlier, the university needed to rapidly protect student and faculty data and keep online courses running amid widespread infrastructure failure.

Working with Microsoft and local partner Intech, PUPR accelerated its move to Office 365 and implemented Azure Disaster Recovery and cloud servers, restoring domain services and backups. Within 36 hours the university’s services were back online—avoiding what could have been a 30‑day outage—maintaining continuity for on‑campus and remote students and demonstrating the resilience benefits of a 100% cloud model in disaster‑prone regions.

Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico

Pedro Pérez

CIO