Goodenough College

Migrating from On-Premise to SaaS

Goodenough College, a higher education institution, made the strategic decision to transition from on-premise to SaaS. While the College was initially hesitant about the move, the benefits soon became apparent.

In the beginning, the College was content with the on-premise setup. The main concern was losing control of the system and the ability to administer the environment in the cloud. The College also explored the possibility of using a virtual appliance, but after discussing their options with the TOPdesk consultants and Support team, SaaS was recommended.

 

Making the Decision to Migrate

The decision to migrate to SaaS wasn’t made overnight. The College had been discussing the potential move for some time. “The fact that we still had the on-premise option and the option to use a virtual appliance made us feel that we weren’t being forced into the SaaS transition”, says Goodenough’s Software Manager.

The College decided to implement the migration at a quieter time for the facilities team, who were the main users of the system. They scheduled seven half-day sessions with their TOPdesk consultant, which proved to be beneficial. It allowed the team to do the work in between sessions, ensuring minimal disruption to the business.

The decision to move to SaaS was also influenced by the improvements offered by the cloud version. After discussing with the Facilities Manager about the new features such as the operator app, the ability to upload photos, and the Self Service Portal (SSP), the College decided these benefits were substantial enough to justify the move. Additionally, the reassurances regarding the methodology of implementation and the buy-in from key stakeholders eased the decision-making process.

The Migration Process

However, the move was not without cultural hesitations. The College had only previously moved one system from on-premise to the cloud. But, with a colleague who could set up single sign-on and around ten business software systems to migrate, the College felt they had the necessary skills and resources to make the move. TOPdesk’s recommended methodology was also a significant factor in easing the transition.

“We had some conditions for the move, such as having our own URL and a test environment, all of which were respected by TOPdesk”, added their Software Manager.

The migration process itself was broken down into seven half-day sessions. The first part involved setting up the single sign-on and ensuring the data migration worked. The College also had to rewrite integrations, conduct extensive testing, and import student data. User acceptance testing was also performed, and the database was cleaned up. The final migration was then completed, and the vanity URL was tested.

When asked whether they would recommend the other companies attempting a migration like this without the use of consultants, the College stated that they strongly believe that attempting this migration without a consultant would have been highly inadvisable or even impossible. The migration process provided an opportunity to engineer business processes, which would have taken much longer without expert help.

The Outcome

Since the migration, the College has seen several benefits. The main benefit has been the improvements to the app, which has been a significant pull factor. There have also been no complaints about speed, and new features are regularly rolled out. The College was initially worried about frequent updates disrupting workflows, but this hasn’t been an issue. The continuous deployment on the cloud is another benefit, as they get updates first. The initial concerns about potential disruptions have been alleviated, thanks to the rigorous internal testing and discussions with stakeholders.