Higher-education IT leaders ask appropriations panel for $10M to prepare ERP systems for cloud transition

Corey Quirk, deputy chief information officer for the state's information-technology organization that supports higher education, told the Appropriations — Education and Environment Division that the North Dakota University System's enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is aging and heavily customized and that preparatory work is needed now to move toward a cloud-delivered replacement.

Quirk said the system (PeopleSoft) has been in production for more than 22 years and now contains more than 7,000 customizations added to meet campus needs, which increases the complexity of upgrades, security patching and eventual migration. "It's not even an off the shelf product anymore," Quirk said. He described a three-phase review that included a market analysis, outreach to peer institutions that have modernized, and a catalog of more than 140 cleanup items that must be addressed before selecting an implementation partner.

Quirk told lawmakers the system vendor (Oracle) has put the on-premises version on a deprecation timeline and the state faces a choice: plan the transition or risk a compressed market with fewer implementation partners and higher costs. The NDUS request — included in agency materials for Senate Bill 2003 — asks for $10,000,000 for two years of "cloud readiness" work, Quirk said. The Senate left the line at $0; Quirk asked the committee to consider funding at some level to avoid being forced into a rushed, costlier migration.

On timing and scale, Quirk said the $10 million is the beginning: the first two years to get the project ready for a procurement and selection. The implementation for the HCM (human capital management) and financial pillars is typically 3 to 4 years while the student information system is often a separate 4 to 5 year effort, producing an overall multi-year modernization program. Quirk estimated total implementation costs — based on market conversations and December 2024 prices — in the $100 million to $150 million range across the multi-year window.

Committee members asked about security, customization and whether Microsoft or other vendors were viable options. Quirk said cloud architectures reduce some security burden by centralizing patches and security delivery. He also described the trade-off between on-premises customizations and cloud configuration: "You move from a customization environment to a configuration environment," he said, which limits some local tailoring but reduces long-term upgrade risk.

Quirk emphasized people and workforce as the largest program risk: many of the staff who implemented the current system will retire or decline to participate in another multi-year ERP conversion. The $10 million cloud-readiness ask contains backfill and consulting dollars to supplement campus staff and protect ongoing operations during preparatory work.

Ending: Quirk said the window to prepare is closing as market capacity for legacy PeopleSoft migration services tightens. He asked the appropriations committee to consider the request and to work with campuses to balance the short-term cost against a larger, later implementation expense.