Challenge
Preparing for a major Salesforce migration
Algonquin College, one of Canada's leading higher education institutions, relies on Salesforce across dozens of departments to support admissions, manage student interactions, and power its student portal.
Salesforce’s updated architecture required Algonquin to set up a brand new Org on Education Cloud and migrate data into it from the legacy Education Data Architecture environment. This was an opportunity to modernize, as moving to Education Cloud would unlock new Salesforce features and enhance the student experience. But it also meant that the college faced a daunting challenge: how to securely move critical student data from one Salesforce environment to another.
This project highlighted another potential roadblock: the need for a backup and restore solution that addressed Algonquin’s specific requirements and challenges. Without a tested strategy for backup, restore, and data migration, the team couldn’t initiate the project with confidence.
“There were two things that made me say ‘we need a solution,’” says Guy Ashby, Manager Enterprise Solution - Salesforce at Algonquin College.“The first was starting a large integration project with our new student information system, where we’d be moving lots of data back and forth. I saw that as a risk, not having a backup solution in case something happened. And the second one was just the overall risk of not being able to operate if a data disaster struck and we didn’t have the right backup and restore plan in place.”
Algonquin needed a secure, enterprise-grade approach to data migration and Salesforce backup and restore.
Solution
Enterprise capabilities + Expert Services
After a careful evaluation of vendors, Algonquin chose Odaseva as the most powerful solution to protect, secure, manage, and migrate its Salesforce data. While some other generic solutions on the market could provide limited partial support, only Odaseva combined a powerful suite of tools with an Expert Services Team staffed by Technical Architects who have extensive Salesforce implementation experience at the enterprise level. Odaseva was also the only vendor that provided critical features that other vendors lacked—such as platform-level data encryption and secure access for backup and recovery processes.
“Other vendors didn’t have some of the features on the Odaseva platform, specifically regarding data encryption and the ability to migrate data to a new Org,” says Guy.
Odaseva supported a full-scale data migration from the legacy Org to the new Education Cloud Org. During this process, Odaseva’s Expert Services enabled continuous sync between the two environments, minimizing disruption and ensuring business continuity.
“With the help of Odaseva’s Expert Services, we got a very good understanding of the tools for the data migration as well as the metadata migration from our legacy environment to the Education Cloud environment,” says Eswar Gudimetla, Enterprise CRM Application Administrator & Developer at Algonquin College.
With Odaseva, Algonquin was able to:
Seamlessly migrate data from a legacy Org to a new Education Cloud Org
Seamlessly migrate data from a legacy Org to a new Education Cloud Org
Continuously sync data across both environments during the transition
Continuously sync data across both environments during the transition
Separate metadata management to allow flexible configuration choices
Separate metadata management to allow flexible configuration choices
Establish a secure and compliant backup and recovery solution
Establish a secure and compliant backup and recovery solution
Gain peace of mind from Odaseva’s hands-on Expert Services architects who were embedded into Algonquin’s project team to provide the highest-quality hands-on training and support
Gain peace of mind from Odaseva’s hands-on Expert Services architects who were embedded into Algonquin’s project team to provide the highest-quality hands-on training and support
Outcome
Partnering with Odaseva to improve the experience for Algonquin College’s students and alumni
With Odaseva, Algonquin College seamlessly completed a complex data migration to Salesforce Education Cloud. The college now operates on a secure, scalable Salesforce architecture that supports ongoing innovation in student services.
By implementing enterprise-grade data protection, Algonquin benefits from complete, tamperproof backups and the peace of mind that student data is as secure as possible. This foundation empowers the college to confidently introduce forward-thinking features—such as mobile student portals, community engagement tools, and automated service functions—that enhance the overall student experience.
“With the introduction of Education Cloud, we can use new features to improve student and alumni communities, such as a chatbot and 24/7 service for the students,” says Guy. “With Salesforce and Odaseva, we’ve improved the ways students interact with Algonquin College.”
The partnership with Odaseva enables Algonquin to innovate without compromise, ensuring data integrity while modernizing its digital campus.
By implementing enterprise-grade data protection, Algonquin benefits from complete, tamperproof backups and the peace of mind that student data is as secure as possible. This foundation empowers the college to confidently introduce forward-thinking features—such as mobile student portals, community engagement tools, and automated service functions—that enhance the overall student experience.
“With the introduction of Education Cloud, we can use new features to improve student and alumni communities, such as a chatbot and 24/7 service for the students,” says Guy. “With Salesforce and Odaseva, we’ve improved the ways students interact with Algonquin College.”
The partnership with Odaseva enables Algonquin to innovate without compromise, ensuring data integrity while modernizing its digital campus.
“If anyone wants to do this kind of migration, I would definitely recommend Odaseva. The platform has multiple functionalities that were instrumental, starting with backups. Other features like scheduling backups and various data masking features on top of its security features reduced a lot of risks. The migrations were done with high data integrity and minimal disruption.”
Eswar Gudimetla
Enterprise CRM Application Admin & Developer
at Algonquin College
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