Consider the Cloud

#Product Updates Read time:
When it comes to hosting your district’s financial, employee, and student data, are you still DIY? As budgets shrink and tech departments are stretched ever thinner, the cloud may prove to be an appealing alternative.
 
When considering factors like convenience, cost, space, security, and peace of mind, the case for cleaning out your server room and making the leap to cloud delivery is strong. On-premise and managed services are still available, but with more than half of Skyward districts currently using secure cloud hosting, it’s worth asking: why cloud?
 
Though the name “cloud hosting” suggests a certain ethereality, it really just means your data is being stored somewhere else. Privacy, security, and performance are all key considerations with cloud hosting, which is why it’s important to make sure that “somewhere else” is a better option than anything you might be able to provide at a similar cost.

We partner with ISCorp to provide a secure cloud hosting option that includes software updates, hardware refreshes, and database maintenance. Daily offsite backups and 24/7 infrastructure monitoring ensure maximum uptime and safety precautions. 

Here's what the benefits look like for you: 


Maintenance - With secure cloud hosting, your updates happen automatically. No more worries about falling behind the release schedule; you can be confident that the version of Skyward you are using is the newest one available, within a matter of days.

Security - Versioning is important enough for security purposes, but there's also the added factor of physical security to consider. Who has access to your servers? How locked down are the facilities? With cloud hosting, you can rest assured that ISCorp's redundant datacenters are staffed by highly trained, rigorously vetted individuals. Third party security audits are completed on an annual basis for your peace of mind (and ours).

As ransomware becomes a more prevalent threat, more schools and districts are turning to the cloud to avoid having to choose between paying cybercriminals off or losing critical data.

Cost - One of the biggest problems with on-premise hosting is the knowledge that your hardware needs to be updated at least every three to five years to keep up with new technologies and demands. This makes for escalating costs and difficult, inconsistent budgeting. With cloud hosting, you'll pay a flat annual fee, but the responsibility for hardware refresh falls on the provider, and the provider is often in a better position to leverage the most advanced technology available.

Uptime - If you've ever experienced unexpected downtime with a system you're hosting at your district, you know how much disruption that can cause. Our secure cloud hosting service features a 99.9% uptime guarantee.


Cloud delivery has become an expectation in educational software, and we expect that trend to continue. If you could use one less thing to worry about in the years to come, hosting might be a good place to start.       
 

 

↪ Click here to learn more about Qmlativ's hosting options.

Wondering what it would take to move your Skyward solution to the cloud? Click here to request more information on pricing tiers and service options.