Eficode and AWS Help University of Turku Scale to Improve Sustainability

Western Sydney University is one of Australia’s leading educational institutions, ranked #1 in the world three times in a row in the Times Higher Impact ratings. The university collaborated with AWS Partner Eratos to create and deploy SIMPaCT, an AWS-supported solution that combines embedded smart technologies, a digital twin, and machine learning to manage irrigation and maximize cooling.

By working with Eratos and other partners to implement SIMPaCT in Sydney’s Bicentennial Park, Western Sydney University helped lower air and surface temperatures by 10 degrees Celsius, save an estimated AUD$2.3 million on health costs annually, and lower water consumption by more than 40 percent. 

Teesside University wanted to open a London campus to expand its UK recruitment and expand the delivery of its business, gaming, and animation courses. It wanted to create a modern, adaptable facility while reducing environmental impact and unnecessary expense on fixed IT infrastructure. To achieve this, the university worked with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and AWS Partner CirrusHQ to build a cloud-based infrastructure that students could access without high-specification personal devices. Using AWS also meant that systems were ready to scale as student numbers grew, which was crucial when starting a brand-new campus and building student numbers from scratch. All of this was achieved with vastly reduced capital expenditure, because it removed the requirement to create large, fixed computer labs that would be unnecessary with early student cohort numbers, and would be inflexible as the needs of students, and the university, changed and developed over time.

With new technologies helping student learning, White Rose Education wanted its IT to have the scalability and performance to meet growing opportunities in the market. Working with AWS Partner CirrusHQ, White Rose Education modernized its technology platform by going serverless. As a result, the organization lowered its costs by 70 percent, saw a 60 percent performance boost, and reduced time to market—launching its White Rose Infinity online resource 100 percent faster.

The University of Sheffield in the UK needed to update an aging on-premises IT system used to manage student records and activities. The university decided to migrate to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and turned to AWS Partner Perform Partners to build a new environment and help it move to the cloud.

After developing and testing a modernized cloud environment, the university and Perform Partners completed the migration over a long holiday weekend, enabling the new cloud infrastructure to be up and running by the following Monday morning. The benefits were immediately clear: faster processes, automated data updates, and improved recovery capabilities in the event of a disaster. Working together, the university and Perform Partners continue to refine the new system and take advantage of more AWS capabilities.