How The Cloud Put Customers First During COVID-19

Tech’s True Value in a Crisis

One of the cloud’s biggest assets has always been crisis preparedness—because when disaster strikes, you don’t have to worry about the viability of on-premise servers or the availability of on-site staff to ensure your data remains accessible and secure. I can assure you that this isn’t lost on those recovering from recent hurricanes on the Gulf Coast—or any organization that went remote at light speed due to COVID-19.

That said, there is another attribute of the cloud that emerged during the pandemic, and it may be even more compelling—because its value extends not just to you, but also those who depend on you.

Take my company Ellucian for example. With few physical data center assets to maintain when we made the shift to a fully-remote workforce, we were able to keep projects running on time, keep the call center operating, and stay in close contact with colleagues and partners without interruption. But even more important than all of that, we were able to focus more energy on our customers in a heightened moment of need because we didn’t have to move mountains to maintain our own technology solutions.

Simply put, we were able to get our own oxygen masks on quickly so we could help others do the same—and therein lies the true value of the cloud in a crisis: when you don’t have to expend all your energy just keeping the lights on, you are free to not just get on with the normal course of business, but to be there for customers in ways that go above and beyond.

Higher Education

Past Present

In the higher education market we serve, that meant were able to make the quick pivots necessary to help institutions dive into remote learning; help institutions provide constant updates to their students, faculty, and staff; and help institutions implement best practices for business continuity.

  • In one case, our team partnered with the customer to design and implement Wi-Fi hotspots in parking lots across their college campus. This was critical for students who did not have internet connections at home and could not access school services remotely. From running cables to mounting access points on the side of buildings, this effort provided students who had limited internet access with a convenient place to complete course work on campus.
  • In another instance, we teamed up with the customer to turn on free VPN services for school administrators that suddenly had to work from home, but had no way to securely access internal systems, such as student records. The team was able to successfully implement remote access on all computing devices, resulting in improved business continuity and ensuring that school staff could continue to do their jobs.
  • In yet another case, we worked with the customer to create an application that manages their school’s rapid testing of COVID at campus entry points, thus enabling students and employees to quickly and safely enter campus. We partnered with other schools in the creation of messaging program to proactively contact students, enabling some of those schools to achieve a 100% enrollment number for the current fall semester.

The big takeaway here is that, while we are always focused on achieving our financial goals, our business is really about helping our customers provide a seamless experience as they effectively educate the next generation of leaders.

Best of all, what was true for us was true for our customers as well. In our work with thousands of colleges and universities throughout the pandemic, we’ve seen that the institutions in the cloud are those that have performed the best and experienced the least disruption.

They’ve been able to devote more energy to faculty training for remote instruction. They’ve been able to scale student services to meet greater demand. And they had a head start in analyzing data from the spring that will help them perform even better in the fall – all because resources weren’t consumed by tactical technology problems.

If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it is that crisis is no time for business as usual – and that it’s not enough to just keep baseline services up and running when problems arise. When our customers need us most, we have to be able to innovate, grow, and evolve to meet the new challenges that inevitably arise.

It’s the cloud that frees us to do so.

By Chris Collins

Security Breach 10 Useful Cloud Security Tools
Cloud Security Tools Cloud providing vendors need to embed cloud security tools within their infrastructure. They should not emphasize keeping high uptime at the expense of security. Cloud computing has become a business solution for ...
Drew Firment
Stop Focusing on Cloud Adoption and Start Focusing on Cloud Maturity For the past several years, most organizations have made it their priority to shift much of their applications and data from on-premises to the ...
Cybersecurity Bootcamps To Help Build Your Career
Cybersecurity Bootcamps We've discussed the importance of training and the hiring of cybersecurity professionals many times on CloudTweaks over the past 10+ years. Now more than ever as the world enters into a dark era ...
Metasploit-Penetration-Testing-Software-Pen-Testing-Security
Vulnerability Scanners Cyber security vulnerabilities are a constant nuisance and it certainly doesn't help with the world in a current state of disarray and uncertainty. Vulnerabilities leave businesses and individuals subject to a wide range ...
Gary Bernstein
WordPress Website Security You've spent time, effort, and money building your website, so don't let it become outdated and run-down by not taking proper care of it. Here are tips on WordPress Website security, speed, ...
Martin Mendelsohn
The Colonial Pipeline Dilemma The Colonial Pipeline is one of a number of essential energy and infrastructure assets that have been recently targeted by the global ransomware group DarkSide, and other aspiring non-state actors, with ...
Gilad David Maayan
Network Security in the Public Cloud What is Network Security? Network security is a strategic approach to securing an organization’s resources and data across the corporate network. It helps protect organizations of all sizes, industries, ...
Maxim Melamedov
Trouble is Brewing Cloud Paradise - 2023 Will Determine Company's Long-Term Plans for Cloud Use The relationship between developers and the cloud was practically love at first sight. For years, migration to the cloud in ...
Answer To Everything.png
Viral Infection Wearabletech
Data Bed.png
The Sticky Note.png

PLURALSITE

Pluralsight provides online courses on popular programming languages and developer tools. Other courses cover fields such as IT security best practices, server infrastructure, and virtualization. 

(ISC)²

(ISC)² provides IT training, certifications, and exams that run online, on your premises, or in classrooms. Self-study resources are available. You can also train groups of 10 or more of your employees.

CYBRARY

CYBRARY Open source Cyber Security learning. The world's largest cyber security community. Cybrary provides free IT training certificates. Courses for beginners, intermediates, and advanced users are available.