Case Study

University: Cloud Capability Uplift

Realising a step-change in IT productivity by introducing a product centric approach to the cloud program.

At a Glance

UNSW partnered with DigiRen to shift from firefighting to future-focused cloud delivery, introducing a product-centric approach that drastically improved deployment speed, user experience, and platform team productivity.

x20
Faster Deployments
90%
Less Engineering Load
4 new
Products Released

Challenge

One of Australia’s leading universities, with more than 60,000 students and placed in the top 20 in the QS World University Rankings in 2024, had implemented a Cloud-first strategy and done a solid job building an AWS landing zone using the Well-Architected Framework. However, they were facing two problems:

  • Cloud consumers (teams that wanted to use AWS to build a solution or application) found it hard to use the University’s AWS landing zone and were turning to Shadow IT, exposing the University to operational and security risks.
  • The Cloud Platform Engineering team was so consumed responding to service requests and incidents they had no time to build new landing zone capability.

The Challenge for DigiRen

To improve the cloud consumer experience to compete effectively with Shadow IT while freeing up time for the cloud platform engineering team to build the necessary capability in the landing zone.

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Approach

To address the challenges facing the University’s cloud program, DigiRen introduced a product-centric approach that involved working backward from the customer to drive productivity. This was achieved by implementing the following:

  1. A product-centric approach assessment, to provide the University with hard data on two key metrics: The elapsed time to deploy a solution to production (averaging 100 days) and a comparison of time spent on BAU requests against building capability (80-20 split).
  2. With hard data in hand, DigiRen introduced new talent to focus on the cloud consumer: product management, service design & user experience.
  3. Demand management and release planning processes were then introduced to address cloud consumer needs and to provide stakeholders with a clear roadmap.
  4. To address the firefighting mode, DigiRen formed a Day2Ops team to take responsibility for service requests and incident management, freeing up the Cloud Platform Engineering team to work on new capabilities.
  5. The AWS landing zone experience was standardised by replacing ambiguous service requests with digital products accessible via a new GUI (and APIs).
  6. Time to deploy solutions on the AWS landing zone was reduced by automating previously manual tasks.
  7. Integration of governance functions was completed, starting with Operations, Cybersecurity & Brand, into the development process to create compliant products.

Outcomes

A x20 reduction in the time required to deploy a static website from 100 days to as little as five days.

Extinguished the firefighting approach, freeing the Cloud Platform Engineering team to build capability.

Effectively out-competed Shadow IT by introducing a new secure AWS Account product for cloud consumers.

x20
Faster Deployments
90%
Less Engineering Load
4 new
Products Released
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