Case Study: University of the Free State achieves faster performance, nonstop availability, and 53% lower power use with Oracle Database Appliance

University of the Free State Gains in Business Agility with Engineered Database Platform to Better Serve Global Student Population

The University of the Free State (UFS), a century-old institution in Bloemfontein serving 33,000 students (including ~2,000 from abroad) and 4,000 employees across multiple campuses, needed to cut database implementation and maintenance costs, simplify a multi-vendor infrastructure, improve processing speed and availability, and reduce its carbon footprint while supporting a growing global student population.

UFS deployed an engineered Oracle Database Appliance platform with Oracle Enterprise Manager and related Oracle technologies, consolidating systems under one vendor and enabling rapid setup and database creation. The change delivered OLTP performance gains of 30–60%, daily batch jobs up to 93% faster, zero planned or unplanned downtime, 53% lower power consumption and a reduction from 22 racks to 4, faster dev/test refreshes, and improved PeopleSoft application responsiveness—allowing faster service deployment and simplified ongoing maintenance.

University of the Free State

Meyr Cruywagen

Head of Database Services, Information and Communications Technologies Services