Rhodes State College Retires a Dozen Virtual Machines and Simplifies IT Operations with OCI
Rhodes State College is a two-year school in Lima, Ohio, with about 4,000 students and more than 100 programs across manufacturing, business, and healthcare. With a small IT team of about six people, every technology decision carries real weight.
Industry
Higher Education
Service
Consulting
Solution
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
In 2022, a scheduled hardware refresh forced a decision: keep Ellucian Banner on-premises, move it to Ellucian’s SaaS platform, or do a lift-and-shift to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The school needed the right answer, not just the obvious one.
The Challenge
Rhodes State had been running Ellucian Banner on-premises with a few helpful customizations that would be lost if it moved to Ellucian’s SaaS platform. The team knew OCI could maximize performance for their Oracle databases, but the complexity of getting there was real.
“We’re a small shop,” says Tony Jackson, Chief Information Officer and Operations Director for IT Support. With a handful of IT staff managing the environment, the school needed outside expertise to work through the options.
Mythics developed a proprietary Cloud Migration Portal to do exactly that, consolidating the scoping and discovery process into a single assessment that answered every key question: licensing costs, timelines, responsibilities, and migration methodology.
“After the CMP assessment, they had all the main factors they needed to make an informed decision,” says Liam Kenny, a Mythics sales consultant.
The Solution
Mythics guided Rhodes State through the decision and then handled the migration itself. The go-live started on a Friday evening, with the Mythics team working through the weekend.
“We had pretty much a 98% workable environment by Sunday evening,” Jackson recalls. “And that Monday when we returned to work, everything was good.”
Services provided:
- Cloud Migration Portal Assessment
- Ellucian Banner Lift-and-Shift to OCI
- Environment, Licensing, and Performance Optimization
- Single Sign-On Implementation
- Post-Go-Live Support
The Results
- Retired two database servers and more than a dozen virtual machines, reducing infrastructure complexity and cost
- Full self-service control over the OCI environment, allowing Jackson to adjust CPU, memory, and servers without involving the full team
- Single sign-on implemented across the college intranet, Microsoft Office, and Ellucian resources, reducing login friction for students and staff
- Improved position for future upgrades, with new Banner Self-Service functionality easy to spin up directly in OCI
“I don’t have to rely on my database admin or my network admin to make sure everything is up and going at all times,” Jackson says. “Our efficiencies went up quite a bit.”
“It was a fantastic experience. The entire team at Mythics was great from pre-project all the way through the planning, the setup and then post-go-live support,” he adds.
This piece was originally written and produced by the Center for Digital Education Content Studio, with information and input from Mythics.
