Swinburne University of Technology creates “a seamless experience for students”
Swinburne University of Technology is based in Melbourne, Australia, enrolling more than 23,000 graduate and postgraduate students. At the end of each year, Swinburne’s students enroll in the upcoming academic year’s classes, which posed issues for its website infrastructure.
Challenge
As students tried to access Swinburne’s website all at once to register for classes, the website’s infrastructure could not support the online traffic and subsequently crashed. Functionality was lost across the student system, and students could not register. Swinburne decided to explore different solutions, including a virtual waiting room.
"I think after 4 or 5 years of this bad experience, we realized that Swinburne couldn’t afford another failure. So, the appetite was there to explore this waiting room option."
Darren Blizzard, Application Integration Development Manager, Swinburne University of Technology
Solution
After researching several options to manage online traffic peaks, Swinburne opted for Queue-it's virtual waiting room. There were several benefits to the service. The waiting room was adaptable and easy to use. Swinburne also had the option to pay for specific events, instead of committing long-term. With a fully customized layout and load tested infrastructure, Swinburne was ready to control website traffic surges.
"Being able to manage the load ... was the biggest benefit of using Queue-it. It’s quite a seamless experience for students. They actually get feedback and they can see what’s happening with their enrollment."
Darren Blizzard, Application Integration Development Manager, Swinburne University of Technology
Results
Using Queue-it in 2018, Swinburne’s annual class registrations did not experience downtime for the first time in several years. Over 3,700 students saw the waiting room while Queue-it's 24/7 visitor peak protection redirected another 24,000 students to the website. Because the website had 100% uptime and students were directed to the university’s website at a rate its infrastructure supported, wait time for students was relatively short. Swinburne received positive feedback from students across social media.
"We were monitoring social media traffic as well when we were doing the event ... The students were surprised in a very good way. We saw a lot of positive comments on our Facebook page."
Darren Blizzard, Application Integration Development Manager, Swinburne University of Technology
About Swinburne
Melbourne-based Swinburne University of Technology is an Australian university with over 23,000 students and 2,500 staff members. Founded in 1908, Swinburne is ranked as one of the world’s best design schools, and is a leader in the fields of physics and civil engineering.