University of Bahrain goes all-in on AWS

The University of Bahrain (UoB), the Kingdom’s largest university with over 28,000 students, announced today that it is in the final phase of migrating its entire IT infrastructure to Amazon Web Services (AWS). Once finalized by end of year, UoB becomes the largest university in the Middle East to migrate its core applications—Student Information System (SIS), Correspondence Management System (CMS), homepage portal and subdomain, and all backend systems—to AWS.

The migration to AWS brings various benefits to UoB including cost savings, increased security, and the agility to launch new projects and bring new ideas to life at speed. On AWS, core applications have been optimized, resulting in performance improvement of more than 40%. The migration has also resulted in over 50% performance improvement to the university homepage, which is the landing page that links to all of its subdomains and student services.

Another key benefit from migrating to AWS is the ability to accelerate research timelines for the university’s Masters and PhD students by giving them access to high performance computing to quickly analyze massive data sets and to leverage advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). With the cloud, the researchers can also easily share their results with collaborators in universities from around the world.

For a seamless migration, UoB invested in workforce development through extensive training for its IT team, who attained higher-level AWS official certifications that helped give them the necessary skills to deliver the project. The on-demand cloud services enable the university’s IT teams today to build secure environments while freeing up their resources to focus on student success.

The migration to AWS comes as a continuation to UoB’s comprehensive cloud computing strategy that it has been implementing over the last few years, which includes strong focus on cloud learning for its students. In 2017, joined AWS Academy, a program that provides higher education institutions around the world with a cloud computing curriculum. UoB’s AWS Academy accredited educators have delivered the AWS Academy Cloud Foundations and AWS Academy Cloud Architecting courses to their students. In 2019, UoB became the first university in the Middle East to introduce the Cloud Computing Degree Program in collaboration with AWS Educate, which saw the first batch of enrollment in the first semester of the 2020/2021 academic year. In 2020, UoB launched a Cloud innovation center (CIC) in partnership with Tamkeen and AWS that focuses on accelerating the digital transformation of the public sector by leveraging cloud technologies to solve real life challenges.

President Prof. Riyad Hamzah, said, “It is vital that higher education responds quickly to a rapidly changing world. By migrating to AWS, UOB optimized core educational applications to better service our students and educators, and opened up a world of opportunities to deliver innovative learning solutions. We are especially proud of our IT Center team that delivered a seamless migration with zero downtime, empowered by their new knowledge and skills. We look forward to continuing to deliver on our cloud strategy by bringing the latest in cloud education to students and building new services and solutions on the world’s leading cloud.”

Dr. Azza El-Shinnawy, Head of Education, AWS, Middle East and North Africa, “Cloud computing today is providing incredible benefits to the education sector including cost savings and increased security. Importantly, it is enabling universities to give greater focus to teaching and learning by allowing for better management of operations. UoB has been at the forefront of realizing the importance of cloud adoption, both on the learning and operational fronts. We are excited to continue to work with them and look forward to seeing them innovate on the AWS cloud.”

Founded in 1986, the University of Bahrain (UOB) is the Kingdom’s largest university with over 28,000 students. The university is dedicated to contributing to the economic growth and human capital development of Bahrain, supported by leading edge teaching technology empowered by Industry 4.0. UOB is committed to meeting market needs by producing next generation of leading talent who aspire to thrive and contribute to an increasing competitive, disruptive and interconnected world.