Fujitsu Elevates UCAM IT Infrastructure

Universidad Católica de Murcia is a private university located in south-eastern Spain. It is known for its emphasis on combining academic excellence with practical training and offers a wide range of undergraduate and graduate programs across various disciplines, including health sciences, engineering, social sciences, and humanities. UCAM’s mission and vision include strong support for athletes through various disciplines and also a commitment to humanitarian work and volunteerism as part of its Catholic vocation.

UCAM is known for its dedication to research and internationalization. It holds strong partnerships with numerous institutions worldwide, enhancing its global reach and
providing students with diverse opportunities for academic and professional growth. This emphasis on building relationships is the foundation for its ongoing collaboration
with Fujitsu.

UCAM has relied on Fujitsu for various IT projects over the last several years, including networking and hardware provision. Most recently, the university depended on this established relationship to develop a reliable and solid disaster recovery for its critical infrastructure services. The website had 3.8 million visitors in 2023 and the portal supports hundreds of log-ins every day, so seamless operations are exceptionally important.

However, the university had been fully dependent on legacy on-premises data centers to support its services as well as the multi-factor authentication required in providing
access to students and employees. With 14,000 students and over 1,500 staff, UCAM wanted to guarantee the availability of access and, as a managed service provider, Fujitsu was the perfect choice to solve this challenge with the perfect approach to customized customer journey based on best practice.

Fujitsu collaborated closely with AWS to create several proofs-of-concept (PoC) for UCAM and provide the university with the best possible options. The existing infrastructure-dedicated data centers were backed up via a migration to the cloud, so UCAM utilizes its on-premises systems with a disaster recovery backup in the public cloud, in essence, making the university a hybrid environment.

“Fujitsu demonstrated great capabilities and knowledge in AWS in multiple projects we have carried out. They helped us in public cloud integration projects and facilitate the development of new initiatives on AWS services and products,” says Sergio León, Systems Engineer from IT and Multimedia Management, UCAM.

The definition and deployment of networking, agreeing classless inter-domain routing (CIDR) of the network with UCAM, the deployment of the AWS IPSec tunnel to the data center, and the configuration of nine servers were done jointly with the university’s technical team. This was important not only to of fer the local team a chance to learn the solution and prepare them for managing it in the future, but also to find the best possible answer to any potential challenges along the way.

“We knew the challenges, but the PoC showed us what was possible. And our staff weren’t working with Fujitsu to make sure they delivered what they’d promised. That was a given,” explains León. “Instead, working together allowed us to decide on improvements in the moment, make decisions in a collaborative way, and challenge each other in a productive manner.”

The on-premises data center is now connected to the AWS cloud through the IPSec tunnel and comprises public and private subnets. Fujitsu runs the DNS service, the muti-factor authentication, identity management and the active directory controller. These four services, replicated online, are always running on AWS and automatically kick in in the event of the university services going down.

“We finally have a backup. The two sites are always available and, in case anything adverse happens and the websites go down, our staff won’t have to spend days trying to get it all back up and running. It’s automatic and, because it’s in the cloud, it’s not reliant on our data centers,” adds León.

The whole project, from start to finish, took only one month and the results are clear. UCAM no longer has to worry about potential disasters. It now has high availability for its critical infrastructure services, providing continuing support and services to thousands of students and staff. What’s more, Fujitsu provided the university with a more secure environment, raising the security level of its services.

“We want to make sure that our staff and students have a seamless experience. Nowadays, this includes 24/7 accessibility to information they need, so a lot of what we do relies on the high availability of our critical infrastructure services. I consider this project to be a way of looking after the wellbeing of everyone here,” explains León.

The results are not just a testament to the dedication of Fujitsu and its partnership with AWS. They showcase that Fujitsu goes beyond the infrastructure layer for its customers, offering end-to-end engagement and full managed services support. What’s more, the project showcases the impact that a true partnership can have in business.

Fujitsu is further collaborating with the university on identifying and moving more workloads into the cloud. A control tower and a small data center are due to be created in AWS and Fujitsu is also going to install AWS Direct Connect for the university, speeding up its digital transformation.

“Working with Fujitsu is always a great experience. They’re experts in what they do, but they never approach their projects from the perspective of knowing better. They always ask questions, collaborate, and make sure that they find out exactly what’s needed. And project delivery is also a true partnership. I am looking forward to working with them again,” says León.