Case Study: Zurich University of Applied Sciences achieves hybrid IT agility and an 85% performance boost with NetApp FlexPod

Zurich University of Applied Sciences is Set to Embrace New Levels of Innovation

Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) is a leading Swiss applied‑sciences university serving students and staff across three campuses with a wide range of teaching, research and administrative applications. The central IT team needed to simplify operations and solve scalability and availability challenges while transitioning to a service‑oriented, hybrid IT model that could support teaching, e‑learning, collaboration and critical services.

ZHAW deployed FlexPod from NetApp and Cisco with VMware, migrating 650 TB and using NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP, MetroCluster and ClusterLion for synchronous mirroring and automated failover. The solution delivered simplified IT operations, dynamic scalability, business continuity and cloud readiness—achieving 75% deduplication in VMware, an 85% performance improvement with Flash Cache, a tripled online backup horizon with Snapshot-based self-restore, and faster, more responsive IT services.

Zurich University of Applied Sciences

Martin Casserini

Head of Servers and Systems