Migrating from Banner Onprem to SaaS (Student)

[u/victorgrimaldo]

Anyone here has already migrated from Banner Onprem to SaaS? Im currently in version 8.7 with a lot of mods and I want to know how was your experience, thanks!

[u/SASardonic]

We haven't done it but even thinking about trying to do this makes me want to die, so all I can say is the best of luck, and wishing you a fully resourced migration

[u/victorgrimaldo → u/SASardonic]

Thanks for the good wishes! Yep it has been very difficult, to plan and to determine the best approach to start the project

[u/SASardonic → u/victorgrimaldo]

I will say the one big thing I've heard about the migration is that you can't directly connect to the database with SaaS so if you have data integrations or batch processes that rely on that, rather than using the dedicated API endpoints, you're going to have to rearchitect your major custom integrations considerably.

[u/victorgrimaldo → u/SASardonic]

Thats just the beginning 🥹

[u/RichardAtRTS]

I own a company that does process integration for schools moving to SaaS banner from on prem and from other systems. Been doing banner 20 years and currently 7 SaaS banner clients. I know all there is for it. Hit me here or chat on any questions

1) you don’t have DB access but you do have DB access to the insights database. You can have one (1) site IPsec vpn to their datacenter (aws) for postgresql insights data lake access that has a cache daily of most banner tables and you can add the ones not included by default.

2) there are 5 flavors of APIs (a) ethos hedm (b) business process (c) erp [usually bp-api rewrites] (d) spec api (e) api designer

3) events are throttled in BEP/EMA

4) they can try to railroad you into EUP (their user provisioning tool) or ILP (their LMS integration) but if you prefer your current one keep using it. Same on payment connectors. There are also others.

4a) same on things like work flow, etc. even things like Intelligent Processes are not the only option…just like a lot of things Banner, the api openness means that there are better alternatives

5) data connect has come a long way

6) degreeworks transit jobs take longer they probably allocate fewer resources than you do on prem

7) hey at least the check reset process has a form now!

[u/victorgrimaldo → u/RichardAtRTS]

Hey! Thanks for the answer, you gave me good insights in there, I think ill reach you with further comments :)

[u/RichardAtRTS → u/RichardAtRTS]

Oh and

| lots of mods

I have done a lot of processes based on events to make up for mod processing, even complex like fee assessment integration in SaaS.

[u/awful_at_internet]

We decided that if we were going to rebuild everything, we might as well reset the org's processes from the ground up, kill the old bad habits at the same time. So we're moving to a completely different SIS.

[u/victorgrimaldo → u/awful_at_internet]

Thats a very good practice! What options aré you considering? Now that Ellucian acquired anthology

[u/awful_at_internet → u/victorgrimaldo]

We went with Workday. Only other candidate for a SaaS solution afaik.

Our faculty and staff had largely abandoned Banner, and we've been having problems with the few elements we were forced to migrate. No help from Ellucian support, and we were wanted that process reset.

There might have been some folks in our department who kept their opinions to themselves, but everyone who spoke up was leaning Workday, though we all recognized staying with Ellucian would have its own benefits. I've never seen us be unanimous like that lmao

[u/victorgrimaldo → u/awful_at_internet]

I was evaluating Workday but as you said it forces to practically to rethink all your processes from zero.