St. John’s University has been recognized as a 2025 AWS Champions Award winner for its transformative efforts to modernize IT infrastructure, enhance operational agility, and bring AI-powered innovation to students and staff. By migrating a substantial portion of its on-premises environment to AWS, the university has built a resilient, cost-efficient cloud foundation that supports automation, remote learning, centralized reporting, and disaster recovery while also creating new opportunities for AI adoption across the institution.

Project Overview
In its journey to the cloud, St. John’s University undertook several key initiatives to modernize technology operations. The institution migrated core application and backend servers to AWS, enhancing overall performance and scalability. It deployed AI-driven services to assist both students and employees, enabling smarter, data-informed experiences. A comprehensive disaster recovery framework was also implemented, leveraging cross-region replication for high availability across cloud and on-premises workloads.

To improve data access and reporting, St. John’s containerized key reporting applications and integrated them with third-party vendors, while remote access was strengthened using Amazon Workspaces and Amazon AppStream. Security and system updates were streamlined through centralized patch management with AWS Systems Manager, bringing efficiency and consistency to campus-wide IT operations.

Challenges Addressed: Flexibility, Security, and Scalability
The university faced growing demands for rapid deployment, centralized management, and modern infrastructure that could support automation and AI innovation. On-premises limitations made it difficult to scale efficiently or deliver highly available services. Manual processes created bottlenecks in reporting, system updates, and network configurations.

Key challenges included:

• Deployment speed and reliability across diverse systems 
• Disaster recovery gaps that limited uptime and resilience 
• Hardware constraints restricting development flexibility 
• Rising operational costs and inefficient data center maintenance 
• Need for secure AI delivery and scalable infrastructure for student services 

Results: Operational Efficiency, Cost Savings, and AI Enablement
By transitioning to AWS, St. John’s University achieved significant, measurable outcomes:

• 20–30% infrastructure cost savings  
• 60% reduction in physical data center footprint, lowering maintenance overhead 
• 90% improvement in service delivery speed and disaster recovery performance 
• 80% faster reporting and improved data accuracy across departments 
• 50% reduction in network configuration time and cost using cloud-native tools 
• Increased AI capabilities enabling new services for staff and students 

The university also benefited from a more predictable OpEx financial model, shifting away from capital-intensive infrastructure investments.

A Modern Cloud Foundation for a Smarter Campus
St. John’s University is setting a new standard for how institutions can modernize their infrastructure to meet today’s challenges and prepare for tomorrow’s opportunities. Through its strategic use of AWS, the university has built a resilient, AI-enabled campus ecosystem that enhances the student experience, empowers staff, and drives long-term sustainability.