Features - On the Cloud
What is the Cloud?
The term "cloud," short for "cloud computing" was adopted by the industry to describe the conceptual shift from having installed software, hardware infrastructure and dedicated staff to support systems to now relying on vendors to provide services by utilizing the power of the Internet (aka the "cloud").
The new model removes the necessity for the organization needing to have installed software on each computer in their organization since its web-based. From the concept of "cloud computing," another term has surfaced called Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to describe the process of providing digital services to organizations through the "cloud."
ResLife Portal & the Cloud
The ResLife Portal is a software-as-a-service system that utilizes the "cloud" to provide our residential life management systems to colleges and universities. This is done through a licensing process of paying for services as modules on demand. This enables us to keep innovating and improving our system, all while you receive the latest version of the modules your institution uses.
To provide the behind the scenes power for our ResLife Portal, we teamed up with the Rackspace Cloud in November 2009. We see this as a strategic partnership to provide the redundancy and scalability to ensure our system is ready to meet your institution's needs. In 2009 the Wall Street Journal reported that "Rackspace's platform business,... is 60% larger than Google's." For more details about cloud computing, visit Rackspace's "What is Cloud Computing?" article.
