Creating Australia’s newest university required more than bringing together two institutions. It called for an entirely new digital foundation to be built while teaching, research and university operations continued uninterrupted. SABRENet helped make that possible.
A contemporary university of global standing, Adelaide University was re-imagined from the ground up, guided by a vision of excellence and equity that seeks to ensure the wellbeing and cohesion of the communities it serves.
As a member of Australia’s Group of Eight research-intensive universities and ranked in the global top 100*, Adelaide University brings together ambition and partnership to create real impact: a lasting benefit for its more than 60,000 students and 11,000 staff, along with thousands of alumni, partners and broader society.
The creation of South Australia’s largest university was far from a simple consolidation of its predecessors, the University of Adelaide and University of South Australia. The merger process followed a complex “two – to three – to one” pathway: the two foundation universities continued to operate, while a third – the brand-new Adelaide University – was designed, built, tested and activated in parallel.
The challenge of delivering – in less than two years – one of the world’s largest higher education mergers was immense. The foundation universities needed to remain fully functional for teaching, research, enrolments, graduations, payroll and day-to-day operations, while Adelaide University’s new systems, services, operating model and digital foundations were progressively brought to life.
Long before the doors officially opened on 5 January 2026, there were multiple “go-lives” behind the scenes. The teams delivered major releases and milestones, each adding another layer of capability and change.
The high-profile merger presented a rare opportunity to create a purpose-built technology landscape for a new institution. While some foundation systems were re-implemented, others were cloned into new instances and or newly chosen to meet Adelaide University’s long-term needs.
The scale of change was unprecedented for the institution. The IT teams led one of the University’s largest technology transformation programs, delivering five major releases, more than 50 major initiatives and over 300 enterprise systems. This included establishing identity readiness for more than 40,000 users, AV readiness across 400+ teaching spaces, deploying more than 3,000 specialist software installations, and enabling email, OneDrive, SharePoint and Citrix services for 42,000 users.
With fixed deadlines to meet, critical foundations including identity, collaboration platforms, end-user technology, audio-visual environments, network connectivity and enterprise platforms had to be ready for launch day. At the same time, large volumes of users, data and services needed to be migrated or integrated without disrupting teaching, learning, research or university operations. Meeting this challenge required a trusted partner capable of delivering the scale and performance needed to underpin the transformation.
Connectivity was a critical dependency
The university required a high-capacity and resilient network foundation that could connect campuses, data centres, cloud services, research platforms and enterprise systems. It needed to create one of South Australia’s largest single managed networks, bringing the two legacy networks together to span 4,272 km, with 2,159 switches and 4,836 wireless access points. Beyond expanding technical capacity, the challenge was to ensure reliability, resilience, security and low-latency performance while supporting growing demand and the transition to a unified digital environment across the University’s seven campuses.
“Our objective was to establish a high capacity, resilient and scalable network foundation capable of supporting Adelaide University’s teaching, research and digital transformation objectives,” explains Adelaide University’s Associate Director Network Services, Peter Chaplin.
“We anticipated that SABRENet would provide the reliable, low-latency connectivity required to enable collaboration with national and international research partners, support growing cloud adoption and ensure our infrastructure could meet the increasing demands of data-intensive research and modern digital services.”
Chaplin says SABRENet has consistently delivered on those objectives, becoming a critical component of the university’s digital infrastructure.
“Beyond providing secure, high-performance connectivity for research, teaching and enterprise services, the partnership has delivered additional value through its responsiveness, technical expertise and collaborative approach.
“SABRENet’s deep understanding of the higher education sector has enabled outcomes that would have been significantly more difficult and cost prohibitive through traditional commercial providers, positioning Adelaide University to support long-term research excellence, innovation and future growth.” says Adelaide University Director of IT Foundation Services, Peter Hughes.
SABRENet played a critical role in supporting the creation of a bold new university by rapidly delivering new high-capacity fibre circuits to interconnect its four data centres. This established the network infrastructure needed to integrate two independent IT environments into a single enterprise platform, enabling the migration and consolidation of core digital services, the movement of significant volumes of research and enterprise data and the implementation of a unified, secure network architecture.
Following the merger, SABRENet continues to support many of Adelaide University’s strategic technology initiatives by providing resilient connectivity for cloud adoption, high-performance computing, research collaboration and enterprise digital services.
Chaplin says SABRENet’s ability to deliver reliable infrastructure, combined with a responsive and collaborative approach, has enabled the university to confidently execute major technology transformation programs while maintaining the performance and resilience expected of a leading university.
A strategic partnership for the future
As the institution – which is South Australia’s second largest employer (after the public service) – continues to consolidate and modernise its digital infrastructure, SABRENet has become “a genuine strategic partner throughout Adelaide University’s most significant technology transformation”, says Chaplin.
“Their technical expertise, responsiveness and collaborative approach have been instrumental in enabling the successful integration of our digital environments while providing a resilient foundation for our research, education and enterprise services.”
This strategic partnership is reflected at a leadership and governance level, with Adelaide University Chief Information Officer Vince Condina serving as a member of the SABRENet Board.
“The commitment demonstrated by the SABRENet team and its delivery partners has consistently exceeded our expectations, making them a trusted partner in supporting Adelaide University’s continued growth and innovation,” says Hughes.
* Ranked #79, QS World University Rankings 2027.
