Case Study: Ontario Universities’ Application Centre achieves faster performance, simplified management, and 27% lower five‑year costs with Nutanix

Ontario Universities’ Application Centre Selects Nutanix

The Ontario Universities’ Application Centre (OUAC), a non‑profit that processes hundreds of thousands of university applications in Ontario, faced an aging IT environment of HP servers and five‑year‑old NetApp storage that was running out of capacity and showing reliability issues. For its technology refresh the team sought a solution that would support 100% growth over two years, integrate with its backup/10G network, and deliver ease of management, high reliability, strong vendor support and the lowest five‑year cost.

OUAC deployed two Nutanix Enterprise Cloud NX‑8000 systems (primary and DR), each installed in under half a day, replacing 34 rack units with just 8 and consolidating compute, storage and virtualization. The Nutanix platform delivered a 27% lower five‑year cost vs. alternatives, cut VM clone times from 31 minutes to 6 seconds, saved over 100 IT hours per year, improved reliability and backup/replication performance, and provided responsive vendor support.

Ontario Universities’ Application Centre

Peter Schaefer

Manager of Systems Infrastructure & Facilities