Our Lady of the Lake University
A better student experience with cloud technology
How cloud adoption helped Our Lady of the Lake University
Results
- Increased system performance and reliability during peak times
- A smoother, more convenient experience for students
- Agility and scalability, with the ability to quickly adopt new technologies
Summary
Senior leadership at the university is very excited about the agility that the cloud offers to the university.
In the recent years—probably in the past two years—I've seen where during peak performance our systems would bog down. I would run out of licenses. I'd have to call people and say, “You need to get off the system.”
Being on the cloud, I'm not going to have that issue anymore.
So, we were wanting a system that's going to be able to grow with us. That's what the leadership team saw in moving towards the cloud. We anticipate, you know, our students—our consumers of that technology—being more adaptable and wanting quicker results than what we're currently producing, and we certainly want to become a 24/7 school.
I think it also is going to provide our institution the leverage that it needs to be able to adapt and quickly change as the needs around our city change regarding higher education. We're in a highly competitive, saturated higher ed market there, and so being able to leverage and adapt quickly is a big draw for us, as well.
Our senior leadership is known as the President's Council, and my CTO sits on that council. Some of the concerns that they expressed about moving to the cloud were security—how secure were our systems going to be? The cost, obviously, was another factor that they discussed.
My CTO has very many credentials regarding security, and so he put their minds at ease, as well as meeting with the cloud team from Ellucian and having demonstrations that eased their mind. It's critical that we continue to foster that relationship with Ellucian. I think it's been a wonderful partnership with us.