NBCC cuts IT maintenance work by 55% with Oracle Autonomous AI Database 26ai
Community college in New Brunswick, Canada, automates routine tasks and clears a path to AI adoption.
Canada | Education
“Oracle Autonomous AI Database 26ai has helped us reduce routine administrative effort while improving consistency and reliability across our database environment.”
New Brunswick Community College (NBCC) wanted to minimize performance bottlenecks for its PeopleSoft Campus Solutions application from Oracle during peak activity times, such as when students rush to meet admission, registration, and financial aid deadlines. The college also sought to reallocate IT staff from routine database maintenance to higher-value activities.
NBCC addressed these challenges by moving its PeopleSoft applications, already running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), to Oracle Autonomous AI Database 26ai. Students now experience faster system response times, while IT staff benefit from automated database maintenance. The database’s native AI capabilities will support NBCC’s upcoming launch of student success initiatives, such as personalized course recommendations, automated progress and retention alerts, and chatbot-assisted academic advising.
Why NBCC chose Oracle
NBCC moved its PeopleSoft applications to Oracle Autonomous AI Database 26ai to improve performance, automate maintenance, and eliminate manual tasks, such as patching, performance tuning, backup management, and capacity planning. Migrating to Oracle Autonomous AI Database enables the easier adoption of AI solutions and a lakehouse strategy using the platform’s open architecture and AI capabilities, such as vector search.
Results
After NBCC moved to Oracle Autonomous AI Database 26ai, students experienced faster system response times and 99.5% availability. From an IT perspective, provisioning new database environments now takes the college’s IT team just a few hours, compared with several days previously. Automated database management has minimized scheduled downtime for time-sensitive maintenance. Overall, the college’s IT maintenance work has decreased by 55%. Security and compliance have been strengthened through continuous patching, automated vulnerability remediation, and built-in data encryption.
The frequency of Severity 1 operational incidents, such as high-impact emergency system outages, has been reduced by 70%.
Oracle Zero Downtime Migration ensured a smooth and fast migration, and Oracle Autonomous AI Database’s automated recovery services and consistent configurations minimize the impact of an unforeseen shutdown. By right-sizing compute and storage resources through on-demand scaling, NBCC achieves more predictable costs and avoids overprovisioning.
The platform’s native AI capabilities, data science tools, and support for virtually all data types simplify NBCC’s planned implementation of a lakehouse architecture with the ease of implementation of Oracle Autonomous AI Lakehouse.
Data from multiple applications can be integrated, governed, and accessed without requiring changes to the college’s data architecture or duplication of enterprise data.
Partners
Integrator SMACT Works architected and implemented NBCC’s migration to Oracle Autonomous AI Database 26ai using Oracle Zero Downtime Migration.
More about the company
New Brunswick Community College is a public college in New Brunswick, Canada, delivering career-focused education and training across multiple campuses.