Australian Catholic University taps SXiQ for digital collaboration program

The Australian Catholic University (ACU) has tapped IBM-owned cloud services company SXiQ to deliver a digital transformation and tenancy migration program to improve collaboration between staff and students.

SXiQ was tasked to merge multiple Microsoft 365 tenancies into a single tenancy for ACU staff and students, aimed to streamline communications, improve collaboration and simplify IT operational support processes and scalability for the university 

The company said the program is part of ACU’s "strategic journey" to optimise learning, teaching, research and services through the technology upgrade.

ACU currently has one tenancy for staff and one tenancy for students, which SXiQ said was hindering learning and preventing effective collaboration between the two groups.

ACU chief information officer and director of IT Niranjan Prabhu said, “This migration plays a critical role in fulfilling our strategic goals for the university, setting us up to continue to improve and enhance the student and staff user experience.”

Prabhu added SXiQ was selected for the project based on the company's previous success, expertise understanding of ACUs user-security, experience in migrating and modernisation, extensive knowledge of Microsoft platforms and backing from global tech giant IBM.

“Our team’s deep understanding of Microsoft’s Teams and Active Directory environments allowed us to architect a migration approach that not only solves the collaboration issues being experienced, but one that acts as an enabler for future digital transformation,” SXiQ chief executive John Hanna said.

“This program of work will enable ACU to collaborate, innovate and embrace regular platform and capability changes regularly, securely and at speed across their entire user group.”

In August, SXiQ was tapped by Australian food company Bega Cheese to migrate its applications, databases and associated backups and cloud optimisation strategies following its $560 million acquisition of rival dairy giant Lion Dairy & Drinks.

SXiQ also worked with health insurance company Bupa for a digital transformation project, which included improved financial management of their cloud services and a shift to Microsoft Azure as their strategic cloud platform. 

SXiQ said the migration is expected to deliver several benefits for ACU, creating a seamless experience for students and employees while also reducing operational costs.

“Ultimately, our digital transformation strategy is about supporting ACU students and all our staff,” Prabhu said. “By making smart decisions about technology deployment we are enabling continuous innovation and creating an agile, optimised way of learning and work.”

Global technology giant IBM acquired SXiQ late last year to strengthen its Hybrid Cloud Services business, while also bolstering its Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure consulting capabilities.