The University of Newcastle has outsourced the hosting and application maintenance of its previously on-premises student information system to DXC Technology.
The multi-year managed services agreement covers its Oracle PeopleSoft campus application, which is used by tertiary institutions as a core student information system.
The university's associate director of solutions Ben Patey said the PepoleSoft campus solution was migrated from on-premises to the AWS cloud in the middle of 2020.
"As part of that move, the compute and database components were included in a group of managed service engagements across those technical service lines," Patey said.
"This new agreement takes a full stack approach for this core application with DXC managing application, compute and database components."
The contract covers Amazon Web Service (AWS) environment management, database, middleware support, and continuous delivery services.
As a result, DXC is managing both the university’s core administrative applications and the underlying infrastructure.
A DXC spokesperson said the previously insourced system meant the university was "focused on simply keeping the lights on."
The university has 37,000 students, 1100 academic staff, and 1500 administrative staff, with its main campus in the Newcastle suburb of Callaghan, as well as campuses on the NSW Central Coast, in Sydney, Newcastle City, Port Macquarie and Singapore.
Patey said the managed services will ensure the university’s applications are kept up-to-date with patches, and that all required enhancements are deployed.
