Case Study: University of Washington achieves scalable, lower-cost reporting and easier management with Microsoft Azure

University Moves Reporting Solution to Cloud for Scalability and Easier Management

The University of Washington built Michelangelo, a web-based self-service reporting tool to speed access to university data, but rising internal use and interest from other institutions created a need to scale capacity, cut hardware and management overhead, and support federated authentication without large capital investments or heavy IT labor. Historically slow, manual reporting workflows and a target of supporting hundreds of users made a cloud migration necessary.

UW moved Michelangelo to Microsoft Azure with only modest code changes, leveraging Azure storage, compute, and InCommon-compatible authentication to boost performance, reliability, and security. The cloud deployment reduced short- and long-term IT costs, freed IT staff to focus on development, and created a scalable platform that makes it practical to extend the service to partner institutions.

University of Washington

Chris Sorensen

Associate Director of Reporting