When the University of California, San Diego launched its largest investment in tech in 2018, they planned to future proof their business processes and systems. Unexpectedly, it also prepared them to handle a global pandemic that changed every norm for the campus. With shelter-in-place orders taking immediate effect, they needed to quickly set up a robust online learning platform - one with powerful analytics to track student success. And, for the times students and staff are on campus, a contact tracing application was essential for their safety. We’d like to offer a conversation with Scott Lee to tell you more about UC San Diego’s rapid transformation from a traditional, on-campus institution to one of the leading examples of remote learning, and the critical role data connectivity played in making this possible.

1. TRANSFORMATION DURING GLOBAL PANDEMIC
Scott Lee, Enterprise Architect
Ashish Pandit, Solution Architect
Date: 08/05/2021

2. Agenda:
• Situation – UCSD Enterprise System Renewal
• Problem – Global Pandemic altered UCSD Campus Activities
• Implications – New controls needed to Return to Learn
• Needs – Mobile Solutions with Event Message Processing
• How we did it!
2

3. UCSD Enterprise System
Renewal Program
• The Enterprise Systems Renewal (ESR) program is a
multi-year initiative that is reshaping the way UC
San Diego does business.
• $70M+ Budget, 500+ FTEs, 150+ Applications
• 4 year roadmap, functional & technical solution
deployment
• iPaaS platform:
• Confluent Kafka – Event Messaging/ Streaming
• Cloudera NIFI – Streaming Data logistic
• Apache Airflow – Workflow management
• WSO2 – API
• IICS – ETL
• GoAnywhere - MFT
3

4. Situation: ESR Program at a Glance
4

5. Problem: Global Pandemic forces remote learning and remote work
<10% students were
remote learning
500+ ESR staff can no
longer work on campus
5

6. Implications: Significant losses with mounting expenses
• $MM revenue losses from
learning, housing/dining &
medical service lines
• Unknown impacts to ESR
budget e.g. HyperCare
$
(Millions)
March
2020
April
2020
May
2020
June
2020
Revenue
ESR Go Live
HyperCare
6

7. Needs: Wide range of additional solutions needed
• Validation in summer, scale in fall 2020
• Fast-track expansion of Leaning
Mgmt. Systems
• COVID Testing with Mobile App
• New Mobile message use cases
• Tight timelines
7

8. Priority #1: Student Testing Process - Summer 2020 Pilot
Native IOS & Android
Web
Google Flutter Toolkit
Scanner SDK
* SSO
* WSO2
* SAP HANA
* Confluent Kafka
* AWS API Gateway
* AWS Lambda
* AWS Dynamo DB
* AWS S3
Google Firebase
GitHub
ZenHub
UCSD DevOps Pipeline
Kiosk test kits
with bar codes
Mobile submission
& tracking
2-month deployment timeline
* New ESR Technology Services
8

9. Priority #2: Mobile Messaging based on Student Activity
Virtual
Advising
Center (CMS)
Medical
Advising
(EMR)
Kafka
Student
Notifier
(Kafka
Streams)
Mobile
Event
(GCP
Firebase)
Mobile
App
Confluent
Student
Activity Hub
(HANA)
9
Speed of Life
Next Best Action
Contextual
Knowledge

10. ESR Architecture: Designed for a digital
Orientation:
ü Better
ü Faster
ü Cheaper
10

11. Here’s the direction presented to the SMT in Q2 2019
Now Future
Extract
Transfor
m Load
File
Databa
se
Activity
Hub
ODS
iPaaS (and legacy integration)
typically works with data at rest
Store
d
Store
d
Store
d
Store
d
Store
d
Longer time
to value
File
Databa
se
Activity
Hub
API
App
Even
t
Strea
m
Strea
m
Topics
iPaaS will deploy capabilities to
process data in-motion via
stream integration
Shorter time
to value
Stream – ingest, transform,
publish

12. Kafka: “Central Nervous
System”

13. Navigating “Open Source”
Fit for purpose
Just in time
deployment
Infrastructure
as code
13

14. Time To Value Jumpstart with Reliability
14
Slower
• Built first platforms
• Trained our developers, engineers and administrators
• Developed infrastructure as code
• Enable UCSD to scale from handful integrations to 100+
• Custom Connectors
Confluent
• Support for roadmap with predictable budget
• Out of the box connectors
• Stable code base from pure open source
• Next version of Infrastructure code

15. Maturity Capabilities Maturity Model & Reliability
15
• Service Provider – UCOP, UC Merced
• Cheaper – cost optimization, right sizing, duty cycle
• Upgrade roadmap with release cadence
• Change management – training, patterns catalog, community of practice
• Marketing – sell our teams why iPaaS important
• Infrastructure as code – automation
• Security – Policy, Process, Compliance
• Governance – reporting, observability, Lean 6-sigma, service management

16. Key takeaways
16
• Executive sponsorship
• Think digital
• Speed of life
• Next best action
• Contextual knowledge
• Open source is not always easy
• Need organizational change management