ORACLE BRIEF

Oracle Student Cloud

An Innovative, New Product for Today’s Learners
in Higher Education

Over the past several years, there has been a significant increase in
competition among institutions serving the needs of post-secondary
learners. At the same, there has been a shift away from structured degree
programs to more innovative learning and engagement models that focus on
the ways students, teachers, administrators and parents engage in the
educational process. This move toward more innovative learning models has
led to an increase in competition from institutions serving specialized needs
for students seeking new competencies or certification leading to career
opportunities. Furthermore, experts predict that more than 50% of students
will attend multiple institutions to achieve their education objectives. So
colleges and universities are searching for ways to differentiate themselves.
Although competition is on the increase, the ultimate objective of each
higher education institution has never changed—the long-term success of
students.

“Today, Oracle Cloud supports 9 million

What Makes Your Institution Competitive? users and 19 billion transactions each
Higher education institutions are competing for students and their success. Oracle day...with the broadest selection of

competes with other application providers to deliver best-in-class solutions to our enterprise-grade cloud solutions in the
customers. Over the years, we have learned that competition is not about direct, world.”
apples-to-apples comparisons. Competition is about being the best version of you. THOMAS KURIAN
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, PRODUCT
Competition is about differentiation. DEVELOPMENT
ORACLE CORPORATION
As a result, each of your institutions will have a different answer to what makes your
institution competitive—what unique factors set you apart from all the rest. Your
institution’s vision and mission set the course of ‘who’ it wants to be in order to serve
the learning needs of the specific students you seek to serve. Then, out of a clear
understanding of ‘who’ your institution wants to be will evolve a list of IT priorities you
need in order to be successful.
For example, community colleges experiencing high demand for general studies
programs might need to scale programs quickly through online learning or
partnerships with other institutions. Others might need to make programs more
attractive to prospective students by offering specialized continuing education options.
Others might focus on a more flexible-transfer credit system and offer a clear, up-front
degree-roadmap to attract students. Many of you are working on improving the
experience of your students and faculty when they access learning and information or
interface with your administrative systems through a variety of mobile devices.

Disclaimer: This document is for informational purposes. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and
should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality
described in this document remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.
 ORACLE BRIEF

Ultimately, for institutions that clearly understand ‘who’ they want to be, it isn’t the “As higher education institutions and
their IT departments confront an
technology per se but the strategic use of technology that makes them successful in
higher education. increasing focus on outcomes, along
with decreasing resources, the
Oracle is committed to innovating for education and research excellence by designing
flexibility and cost-effectiveness of their
solutions for higher education that align with your priorities that help you win in the
business systems and processes rise
competition for students and their success in achieving individual goals. We know
to critical importance. It is rewarding to
there are many answers to ‘what makes my institution competitive’?’ There are also
see that Oracle is introducing new
many technology paths to achieving that competitive edge.
cloud-based options that will allow
As a result, Oracle has committed to significantly investing in higher education by institutions to shift their focus from
developing a range of products that give higher education customers a choice in when running the computers to becoming
and how they want to strategically adopt new and evolving technology solutions. more efficient and effective
Oracle will continue to build on its successful, on-premise Campus Solutions suite of enterprises.”
products. At the same time, Oracle HCM and ERP Cloud applications are building JOEL L. HARTMAN
higher-education-specific functionality such as grants, encumbrance accounting, and VICE PROVOST AND CIO
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA
position control multiple assignments. These solutions can be deployed on-premise or
as hosted solutions. More information about these product solutions can be found on
Oracle.com / Applications Cloud.
Along with continued development of its best-of-breed solutions, Oracle is designing a
new, comprehensive, cloud-based student information system (SIS). The new system,
Oracle Student Cloud, will be integrated with the Oracle HCM and ERP Cloud
products to deliver a complete, cloud-based higher education solution. The Oracle
Student Cloud is the focus of this solution brief.

Why Cloud?
It is important to have a common understanding of ‘cloud’ and its potential benefits
before any conversations can be started about if/when/how to move to ‘cloud’.
Cloud computing is the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the
internet to store, manage, and process data—rather than hosted entirely on a local
server. Cloud is the next stage in the Internet’s evolution—delivering application and
infrastructure needs as a service that is available whenever and wherever customers
need it. Because cloud solutions are sold on demand, they have a potential for greater
flexibility than an on-premise application that the customer must manage and maintain.
The promise of cloud computing is to reduce burden on IT resources because the
vendor takes care of maintenance, bug fixes and upgrades—not the customer. This
shift of responsibility means your organization can divert precious IT resources to more
mission-critical projects (Academic Support, Learning Systems, Research, etc.) and
using these valuable resources to innovate and transform rather than spend time on
maintenance. Also, licensing cloud solutions becomes an ongoing operating expense,
not a capital expenditure like most on premise IT procurements. This new model
results in a consistent and predictable cost structure for the institution.
Cloud-based solutions also have the advantage of being built on the most current
technologies made for our mobile, any-device, anywhere modern world—rather than
trying to update or customize on-premise applications to fit today’s mobile generation.

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trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
 ORACLE BRIEF

Why a Cloud Student System? "I am excited that Oracle is expanding

their investment in the Higher
Today, most conversations about cloud-adoption are not focused on ‘if’ but 'when'. Education product offerings. They
Students are already used to interacting with businesses and services that have made recognize that in Higher Education
the leap to cloud. Students and researchers engage in discussion and debate on core “one size doesn’t fit all” and by
providing a new product that is cloud
issues online, and can do a majority of their research by accessing materials on their based they are providing us with
computer through cloud-based services like Audible, Google books, Amazon Kindle, choices. The fact they are moving in
this direction tells me that Oracle
and iBooks. Students store classwork on their personal Dropbox or iCloud, and work understands the Higher Education
collaboratively with other classmates using Google Docs. It’s not that students care industry and is building their strategy to
meet our changing needs."
whether a service is cloud-based or not. They don’t. But what they do want—and what
they have come to expect because of the prevalence of cloud services in their CINDY BIXLER
CIO
personal lives—is to have all-the-time, immediate access to what they need where and EMBRY-RIDDLE AERONAUTICAL UNIVERSITY
how they need it.
As higher education institutions consider cloud-based solutions they are asking
questions such as: What is the best strategy to incorporate cloud solutions for my
institution? Is a cloud-based student system something that would work well in my IT
environment? Where would a cloud-based solution be the right choice for any of my
business models? For many of these institutions, a cloud-based student system will be
the right choice.
As discussed earlier, one size—one answer—does not fit all. That is why Oracle offers
its customers choices. With Oracle, higher education institutions have the flexibility to
choose from on-premise, hosted and cloud as needed to fit their ever-changing,
competitive environment.
Next we will take a look at what Oracle is planning for its Student Cloud offering.

An Innovative Choice—Oracle Student Cloud

Oracle’s overall cloud strategy is to offer choice and flexibility with the most
comprehensive, modern, and secure portfolio of cloud products and services to meet
an organization’s needs. Today, Oracle is delivering cloud solutions that are:
» Comprehensive. Unmatched breadth and depth of offerings for public, private, and
hybrid cloud computing at every level of the technology stack.
» Modern. With advanced capabilities including social and mobile technologies and
built-in business insight.
» Secure. Reliable, world-class security for mission-critical systems.
As a result of this overall strategy, Oracle plans to deliver a new, innovative and
complete Student Cloud system based on the most modern, collaborative, and secure
technology available from any other vendor. The new system will provide
comprehensive student life cycle support for all types of institutions.
Benefits of Oracle Student Cloud will include:
Connected. Students and faculty will have a connected experience with
access to their information from any device, any time. Communications and
notifications will encourage proactive interaction while embedded social tools
will promote collaboration.
Personalized. An easy-to-access user interface for students and faculty will
allow your institution to brand and customize for a more personalized look
and feel. You will be able to adapt and change the application quickly to
maintain your differentiation.

Copyright © 2014, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle and Java are registered
trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
 ORACLE BRIEF

Flexible. The flexible architecture of Oracle Student Cloud will give your
institution room to grow as your programs and student offerings expand to "We're extremely excited about the
manage flexible and traditional term students. impact these cloud applications can
have across the higher education
Insightful. Context-based analytics will provide your advisors, faculty and landscape. Oracle's proven experience
staff with insight into your student body to help them better understand deploying cloud in many other
student needs and issues to proactively intervene and more accurately plan. industries is our engine for designing
and delivering the best-in-class cloud,
Secure. Oracle cloud solutions never intermingle customer data, so your and on-premise solutions for higher ed.
organization can be confident that its information is secure. You can also At a time of intense pressure to
choose whether you’d like your SIS on Oracle cloud or a private cloud. improve student success, we believe
these revolutionary applications will
For the planned 2015 launch of Oracle Student Cloud, we are focusing on the core meaningfully impact higher education's
capabilities of enrollment, payment and assessment which our customers have ability to deliver education at a lower
identified as the core functionality necessary. More comprehensive functionality will cost."
follow in the phased delivery for those of you with more complex business models.
JEFF HENLEY
CHAIRMAN
Summary ORACLE CORPORATION

Oracle has always listened to and learned from its higher education customers. And
higher education has been a strategic priority in its product strategy. So it is no
surprise that Oracle would make higher education its first foray into an industry-specific
cloud application: Oracle Student Cloud.
Now higher education customers will have a chance to choose a student system and
deployment option best suited to their organization’s needs and objectives—while
having the assurance that Oracle is committed to supporting higher education and
innovative for education and research excellence—now and far into the future.

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trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.