The University of Manchester
Leading UK university broadens digital capabilities for future-ready growth, minimizes technical debt, and accelerates service delivery for students and staff.
Business goals
The University of Manchester, a Russell Group institution serving 75,000 students and staff, needed to scale support to 100,000 through its Manchester 2035 digital growth strategy.
By 2035, the University wants to:
- Expand its digital campus locally and globally
- Provide personalized, instant digital student services
- Standardize integrations to lower costs and risks
Achieving this necessitates modernizing a complex infrastructure of ∼2,000 applications and 200+ enterprise systems, including Oracle E-Business Suite, Canvas, and Connect, using an integration platform.
Integration Challenges
Decades of growth created a fragmented landscape of 1,200 legacy integrations across thousands of applications, leading to substantial friction for staff and students.
Lacking a centralized digital service portal, the University also experienced:
- Slow delivery cycles and high operational risks from error-prone manual monitoring
- Severe financial vulnerability, with potential digital service outage costs reaching £1.3 million per hour
- Persistent technical debt that hindered teams from prioritizing innovation over routine maintenance
How Boomi Helped
The University of Manchester adopted the Boomi Enterprise Platform as its core integration layer, consolidating 1,200 legacy integrations into more than 500 resilient data flows.
This infrastructure accelerates project delivery from months to weeks, facilitating ERP and CRM modernization and strengthening data governance. It provides a secure, scalable foundation for AI expansion and legacy platform upgrades.
Operationally, automated alerts enabled a shift to efficient “management by exception,” while a “secure-by-design” architecture ensures improved stability.
Results
Boomi helps the University of Manchester advance its Manchester 2035 goals through a modern, adaptable integration foundation. Key benefits include:
- Strategic Scalability: Supports 75,000 current users, scaling to 100,000 students by 2035.
- Expanded Digital Campus: Technical agility to expand globally and deliver modular academic degrees.
- Enhanced Student Services: IT modernization improves real-time, personalized experiences, contributing to higher NSS scores.
- Lower Risk: Clears 30 years of technical debt through unified integration, reducing operational costs and IT delivery times.
