The university deployed MySQL HeatWave to improve application performance, security, and scalability, while lowering costs.
Introduction & Background
Universidad Andina del Cusco is a private non-profit university with more than 22,000 students and a teaching staff of 1,200 educators and 350 administrators. Founded in 1984, the university focuses on comprehensive training, scientific research, innovation, and promoting ethical principles supported by Andean values such as wisdom (yachay), work (llank’ay), and solidarity (ayni).
Universidad Andina del Cusco’s modern infrastructure ensures students have access to state-of-the-art facilities and resources. The university is committed to continuous improvement of its educational and associated services, aimed at shaping competent professionals and citizens and contributing to regional and national development.
Business Challenges & Goals
Universidad Andina del Cusco had been a long-time user of MySQL because of its seamless compatibility with the university’s PHP-based services. However, the IT department was encountering significant challenges in managing and maintaining the database infrastructure as the university grew in terms of number of students, faculties, and scope of services.
Operational tasks such as backups, patching, and monitoring were performed manually, consuming valuable time and resources, and limiting IT efficiency and innovation.
The university’s user community was experiencing application performance issues on a regular basis, with query execution times frequently surpassing acceptable standards. Attempts at scaling the university’s database systems to meet user needs became increasingly challenging, largely due to constraints in computing capabilities and financial resources.
Universidad Andina del Cusco also needed to enhance the security of its database environments, many of which were vulnerable to external attacks.
Business Results & Metrics
Universidad Andina del Cusco improved application performance, reduced operational costs, and increased security and scalability by deploying MySQL HeatWave on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), significantly enhancing most of the IT services across the institution.
By running MySQL HeatWave on OCI, the university achieved noticeably faster queries for critical applications, including its learning management system (LMS), website, and various ticketing management systems—greatly improving the user experience. Additionally, the IT team can now optimize transactional workloads using MySQL Autopilot, further boosting application performance and availability.
With its new, highly scalable database infrastructure, Universidad Andina del Cusco can now effortlessly accommodate more students and expand its services without limitations in terms of technological resources. This ensures it can meet the dynamic and evolving needs of its diverse user community, while optimizing utilization of its technological infrastructure and reducing operational costs.
The university significantly reduced institutional risk and eliminated potential information security vulnerabilities by migrating to a secure MySQL HeatWave environment on OCI. Leveraging Oracle OCI infrastructure services and features including built-in security controls, isolation of resources, and encryption, Universidad Andina del Cusco has minimized the threat of external attacks. The IT department also benefits from consultations with MySQL and Oracle Support teams to preemptively address future security needs.
Universidad Andina del Cusco gained substantial financial benefits by implementing MySQL HeatWave on OCI, including a reduction in infrastructure costs by more than 20% compared to its previous configuration, and local invoicing, which avoids the complex tax issues inherent with overseas suppliers. Additionally, the database cloud solution has enabled the university’s IT department to achieve significant savings in operational overheads, such as electricity, air-conditioning and maintenance costs.
The deployment has enabled the university to automate critical IT processes, including the replication and duplication of databases for development environments, and regular backups which are now seamlessly safeguarded in OCI Object Storage for enhanced reliability and accessibility.
By leveraging MySQL as a fully managed service, Universidad Andina del Cusco has eliminated time spent on administrative tasks such as upgrades, patches, and maintenance, and reduced the time required for routine monitoring and verification activities by at least 30%. This has empowered the IT team to boost its effectiveness by reallocating valuable resources to more strategic initiatives, such as enhancing its applications.
“In addition to the cost and time savings of MySQL’s managed cloud service, a real benefit for us is that we are always on the most up-to-date infrastructure, which enables us to achieve and champion the university’s values of continuous improvement and innovation,” commented Jean Carlo Benavides Gaona.
Universidad Andina del Cusco ensured a seamless implementation by leveraging technical expertise from Oracle and MySQL Support teams throughout the project. MySQL Support engineers guided the university’s IT team in understanding and preparing for the migration, offering insights into process steps and optimal architecture. They also provided hands-on assistance during the migration, significantly accelerating the entire process.
As one of the first universities in Peru to successfully implement a cloud database and infrastructure solution, Universidad Andina del Cusco has positioned itself as an institution pioneering in technology and innovation.
Why MySQL HeatWave?
Universidad Andina del Cusco selected MySQL HeatWave after assessing cloud database solutions from multiple vendors, including all major international players. Its decision was driven by several key factors, including price-performance ratio, technical support capabilities, and compatibility with the university’s open-source, PHP-based solutions.
“With MySQL HeatWave we reduced our database infrastructure costs by more than 20% and optimized our IT operations through automation, enabling us to deliver smoother and more efficient services to our university community while increasing our focus on innovation,” said Jean Carlo Benavides Gaona.