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Victoria University

A Cazena Data Lake on Azure helps a top university analyze and improve educational outcomes and business operations.

Instant

Added advanced analytics instantly, with no additional resources or headcount required.

Agile

Modernized to a powerful foundation for ongoing Education and Operational Analytics.

Self-Service

Consolidated many data sources and tools in a single Data Lake with easy SaaS access.

About Victoria University

Victoria University, one of the world’s top higher-education institutions, hosts more than 40,000 students in multiple locations across Australia. With the advice of technology partner BCS Technologies, VU chose a Cazena SaaS Data Lake on Microsoft Azure to deliver deep insights from the massive amounts of data generated by their students and systems.

Victoria University (VU) has been rapidly increasing its emphasis on advanced analytics, addressing  academics, marketing, and operational efficiency. Part of VU’s goal was to leverage more data sources, using not just structured data from university databases, but also unstructured data from logs generated by other student systems and facilities. 

Due to the variety, volume, and diversity of the data they wanted to analyze, the analytics team knew VU would require more than a traditional data warehouse and business intelligence (BI) tools. They were ready to try a Hadoop/Spark stack that could support all analytics, including R, Python, Java and more. 

VU turned to specialist analytics consultant BCS Technology for help in choosing the right service, platform and deployment. BCS led VU to an innovative solution, Cazena’s SaaS Data Lake on Azure, with Cloudera’s industry-leading Hadoop stack embedded. 

The Challenges: Modernize Quickly

Implement a secure platform for big data and advanced analytics, without adding DevOps or IT requirements

Support decision making across the organization, including academic, operational, and business groups

Reduce the time it takes to collect, store, and analyze big data from many sources

Create a solid foundation for advanced analytics starting with proactively identifying  students at risk of dropping out

The Solution: A Cazena SaaS Data Lake

With Cazaena, VU now has a SaaS Data Lake with Cloudera in a private, single-tenant Azure environment. Their Cazena SaaS Data Lake includes all operations, security, compliance, monitoring, automation, and hybrid capabilities to keep Cloudera securely connected with VU’s different data sources and analytics tools.  BCS delivered valuable training and guidance on streaming data and other key tasks.

By choosing a SaaS Data Lake, VU was able to focus resources on real analytics use cases months sooner than planned, delivering value faster. The results of the first project speak for themselves: VU can now identify students at risk of dropping out within a few days based on predictive indicators. This gives VU a huge advantage in reaching out to at-risk students with assistance or resources to help them complete their educational plans.

As the use cases grow, technology flexibility will be critical. It’s not the only factor to consider though, Lim said. “For us, the success of this project is not just about the technology, it’s finding the right partners that you can work with closely. Make sure you have a very tangible use case that you can measure against, and be persistent in starting small.”

A SaaS Data Lake Meant We Could Get Started with Advanced Analytics Quickly.

“If we had to do this on our own, it would have taken at least six months. With guidance from BCS Technology and the Cazena SaaS Data Lake with Cloudera on Microsoft Azure, we were up in a couple of weeks. We were able to get to work on the data, without having to worry about all the other requirements of managing the infrastructure ourselves.”

Danny Lim Business Intelligence Solutions Manager, Victoria University

Solution Partners

Cloudera

Victoria University's data lake for education analytics includes many embedded data engines and components from Cloudera's best of breed stack.

Azure

Victoria University's data lake runs on Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure. Cazena is the fastest path to Microsoft Azure data lakes that are instantly ready for analytics, machine learning and AI.

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