Reimagining university libraries with AWS: University of Maryland's six-month cloud migration | Amazon Web Services
Higher education institutions are modernizing critical systems to better support students, faculty, and researchers. This customer story blog details how the University of Maryland completed a six-month cloud migration to reimagine its library services using AWS. Read the blog to see how a structured, time-bound migration supported modernization goals, then reach out to Coastal Computer Systems Inc. to explore how similar approaches could apply to your organization.
Why did the University of Maryland Libraries migrate to AWS?
The University of Maryland Libraries faced challenges such as deteriorating hardware, rising licensing costs, and staffing constraints that threatened their operations. With a small IT team managing an aging on-premises infrastructure, the decision to migrate to AWS was strategic, allowing them to retire their data center and enhance operational efficiency while reducing costs.
How long did the migration process take?
The migration process took under six months, during which the libraries moved 58 virtual machines, including 25 RHEL Windows and 33 worker nodes across two Kubernetes clusters, along with 95 TB of storage. They transitioned their Kubernetes environment to Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) to optimize their operations.
What benefits did the libraries experience post-migration?
Post-migration, the libraries experienced enhanced security controls, improved application performance, and better cost transparency. The transition allowed them to close previously open administrative access points, conduct comprehensive access reviews, and benefit from new AWS services that addressed operational challenges, ultimately freeing up staff to focus on innovation rather than hardware maintenance.

Reimagining university libraries with AWS: University of Maryland's six-month cloud migration | Amazon Web Services
published by Coastal Computer Systems Inc.
Coastal Computer Systems, Inc. began in 1995 to provide IT services to local businesses in the Fort Lauderdale area. We provide IT services and support to small and medium sized businesses in every industry. Our mission at Coastal Computer Systems, Inc. is to build long-term relationships with our customers by effectively applying the latest information technology (IT) services and equipment to improve their daily business operations. We're known for helping our customers by providing fast, value added professional IT services and support to help our customers businesses run smoothly.
We have helped many companies achieve this for the last 25 years by offering a wide variety of IT Services from Managed Services, Cloud Computing, and Network Services. Let our experienced IT team solve all of your IT needs.
We understand the importance of a reliable IT infrastructure and our IT services are customizable to meet the needs of any size organization in any industry.