Case Study: Open University achieves cost-efficient, secure, future-proof IWMS with Planon Cloud

Open University Beneficial business case and successful migration to Planon Cloud service

The Open University, the UK’s largest higher-education provider with about 180,000 students, 5,000 tutors and 4,000 staff, had used Planon’s IWMS since 2006 but ran into problems keeping the in‑house installation up to date. Multiple stakeholders and IT resource constraints created a backlog of software releases, preventing the Estates team from using new functionality and putting the long‑term value of the investment at risk.

The OU migrated the existing Planon environment “as is” to Planon’s Cloud within a three‑month programme — Planon upgraded the live database, provided test and acceptance environments, and an overnight cutover to the cloud. The move delivered immediate IT and estates resource savings, avoided hardware costs, met DPA and PCI DSS security requirements, enabled automatic future updates, improved performance and cost efficiency, and made the solution more secure and future‑proof.

Open University

Karlo Porter-Price

IT & Information Manager