Moving to the Cloud

Considering UniversitySite Cloud vs UniversitySite behind-the-firewall?  Here is everything you need to know.

Applies To

  • Behind the Firewall Customers (vs UniversitySite Cloud)

Intended Audience

  • System Administrators
  • Training Managers
  • Trainers

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Background

We have managed production instances of UniversitySite for our clients for over a decade and we have been able to provide more value to them by  leveraging the strength of Microsoft's cloud computing platform, Microsoft Azure, 

What if your law firm isn't adopting the cloud?

There is a common misconception about that cloud computing is something new that your firm is not already doing.  You won't have to look very far to uncover other hosted systems at your firm.  They frequently contain more sensitive data than that of UniversitySite.  Find out if any of the systems used by HR are hosted, such as an online payroll system or an online HRIS.

How many firms are adopting UniversitySite cloud?

Nearly 100% of new customers choose UniversitySite cloud instead of installing UniversitySite on their own equipment behind their firewall.  Most customers who originally installed UniversitySite on their own equipment have moved to UniversitySite cloud.  

Pros

  • Evergreen system - your site will always be up to date running the latest version of UniversitySite
  • Savings -  you may be able to free up hardware, retire old servers, and your IT people won't have the burden of performing UniversitySite installations, upgrades, and backups and troubleshooting
  • Improved Support - When UniversitySite is running behind your firewall, your users have to coordinate screen-sharing sessions for assistance with our support team.  This causes delays that can be avoided when UniversitySite is in the cloud
  • Mobility - We rely on our phones more and more every day.  With UniversitySite running in the cloud, your users will be able to access videos and other materials anywhere, anytime, on any device
  • No loss of functionality - single-sign-on still works, user profile data sync still works, Outlook integration still works...

Cons

  • Cloud services are provided for a yearly fee.  Contact Lawren for a quote.
  • If you have created custom reports, you may need database access to continue to run those custom reports.  A reporting server is available for a yearly fee.  The reporting server provides access to a mirrored database that is updated twice a day.  Contact Lawren for a pricing on the reporting server option

Migration Effort

The migration process from behind-the-firewall requires very little effort from your internal technical resources.  It usually takes them about 30 minutes to send us your existing data.  We'll also arrange a 30-minute screen-sharing session with your technical resource to setup single-sign-on and user sync.  

Migration Process

The migration is typically completed in one-week.  

You will send us a backup your database and data folder.  We provision a new site with your data and we update your site to the current version of UniversitySite.  At this point, your training team can be given access to the site for testing purposes.

Next, we'll arrange a 30-minute screen-sharing session with your technical resource to setup single-sign-on (SSO) and user sync.  We will install and configure two apps for this purpose.  All communication between these apps and the cloud is encrypted and all communication is outbound so you won't need to make any changes to your firewall.  

SSO leverages windows authentication on a tiny web app we have created for this purpose.  You are already using our User Sync app, so we'll just be adjusting the settings to send user profiles to your cloud site instead of your internal server.

When you are ready to begin using the cloud site for production use, we will request a fresh backup of your data.  

Data Transfer Procedure

We need a backup of your UniversitySite database and UniversitySite web folder (usually at c:\inetpub\wwwroot\UniversitySite\Data).  We ask that you zip them and send them to us using your file sharing service or ours.  Please note our file share service has an upload limit of 10GB per file.  

Recommended Cleanup: Delete the contents of c:\inetpub\wwwroot\universitysite\data\default\temp\import prior sending us your data.  If that folder exists, it could contain content that was imported into UniversitySite.  Transfering it to us serves no purpose.

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