Case Study: Ruhr University Bochum achieves efficient, low-cost management of 70,000+ identities with Oracle Virtual Directory

Ruhr-Universität Bochum Gains Efficiency in Managing More Than 70,000 Identities While Lowering Costs

Ruhr‑Universität Bochum (RUB), a large German university serving more than 70,000 students, staff and guests, needed a high‑performance, low‑maintenance identity solution for RUBiKS—its core application that delivers 150+ services. The university’s priorities were to avoid inconsistencies between distributed directory services, reduce total cost of ownership, and ensure easy scalability and high availability as the campus grew.

RUB deployed Oracle Virtual Directory, Oracle Directory Services Plus, Oracle Database Enterprise Edition and Oracle Real Application Clusters to create a virtualized, unified view of identities without consolidating data. By accessing original source data in real time, centralizing roles on Oracle Database, and using LDAP servers behind load balancers with a seven‑node RAC for high availability, RUB cut maintenance and TCO, eliminated synchronization issues, accelerated access and deployments, supported temporary accounts, and enabled seamless rolling upgrades.

Ruhr University Bochum

Hans-Ulrich Beres

Project Manager