The University of Canberra, a small institution with a lean IT team, created a self-service portal that gives researchers and students on-demand access to critical IT resources. Built with the Cloud Management tool available in the Nutanix Cloud Manager software they use to control IT infrastructure, the portal helped the university slash resource provisioning times from weeks to hours, fueling innovation in AI research and other cutting-edge projects. This initiative earned them industry recognition as a finalist in the CAUDIT Award for Excellence in Research Support.
“We wanted to make sure that if researchers were spinning up resources, especially with GPUs, we weren’t going to get a nasty cloud bill,” explained Justin Mason, the associate director of Technology Services at the University of Canberra, in an interview with The Forecast.
For years, acquiring IT resources at the University of Canberra was a slow and cumbersome process. A researcher or student would submit a request, and the IT team would manually provision the necessary virtual machines (VMs). This bottleneck grew palpable with the surge in requests for resources to power AI-related projects. Mason said research teams viewed the IT team as a necessary but slow gatekeeper.
"This is too long because sometimes they might just need resources spun up for some disposable workloads or to do something really quick," Mason said.
"By the time that our requests were fulfilled, they've maybe moved on to something else or bought their own equipment, which is a whole other issue in itself."
This created a risk of expensive shadow IT and positioned the IT team as a blocker to innovation.
Need for Speed and Agility
The turning point came during a series of cloud strategy workshops where Mason and his team listened to the frustrations of academics and researchers from the SciTech, Health, and Research & Innovation Services departments. The common challenge was the need for faster, more agile access to high-performance computing and storage resources.
"It clicked when we were doing those workshops,” Mason said. “We can make our resources available to them through Nutanix."
They realized their Nutanix software could host a self-service portal, putting the power of IT provisioning directly into the hands of users.
"I knew it was there, but it was a matter of finding the right use case for it," Mason recalled.
With a clear vision, Mason wrote a business case and successfully secured funding from the university's Teaching and Research Equipment Fund. Now, select faculty use the self-service portal to provision their own Linux (Red Hat Enterprise) and Windows Server 2019 workloads. They can choose from various CPU, memory, and storage configurations, and even access expensive GPU resources.
"It gives them fast access to workloads, so they get to try stuff quickly before they go with the full on-prem solution," said Karthick Ekambaram, manager of Technology Services at the University of Canberra.
“The GPU is expensive in the cloud, so this portal lets them try it quickly and feel the performance."
Innovation Ripple Effect
The impact of the self-service portal has been felt across the university. Researchers and students can now spin up a security- and rules-compliant VM in a matter of hours, test an idea, and tear it down without waiting for IT intervention. This is particularly valuable for those working with large language models (LLMs) and other AI technologies.
"We might want to just spin up a VM for a couple of days to test the LLM and then just blow it away," says Mason, highlighting the need for agility in modern research.
What began as a project for researchers has evolved into an invaluable resource for final-year IT students.
"Bachelor's students doing their capstone projects have very minimal budget, so it would be impossible for them to access cloud resources," Karthick explained. "So they're pretty happy with this self-service solution."
With the manual, time-consuming task of provisioning VMs now automated, the lean IT team has been able to redirect its efforts to more strategic initiatives, such as bolstering the university's cybersecurity posture.
"This has reduced weeks of worth of wait time for our users, but it also allows our team to spend more time doing other valuable things," said Karthick.
The success of the self-service portal has not gone unnoticed, and the team is already planning to expand the portal's offerings to include Windows 11 and Ubuntu.
"I think the word is getting around the university, so we've got other areas now saying they would love the option to use the resources," says Mason.
A Model for the Future
This success story is a testament to the power of listening to user needs and leveraging existing technology in innovative ways. The University of Canberra was praised for "punching above its weight" against much larger institutions as a finalist for a prestigious research excellence award.
By reusing and extending existing on-premise investments rather than relying solely on expensive public cloud options, the IT team gained greater control over spending, energy use, and compliance with ethical data handling requirements.
“This demonstrates how Nutanix technology can drive cost-effective, scalable, and user-friendly research infrastructure,” Mason said. "If we can do it, then most other institutions can do it as well. Sometimes it could seem daunting, but hopefully that gives people the confidence that they can do it as well."
Ken Kaplan is Editor in Chief for The Forecast by Nutanix. Find him on X @kenekaplan and LinkedIn.
© 2025 Nutanix, Inc. All rights reserved. For additional information and important legal disclaimers, please go here.