Enabling Online Learning

For years, the industry has been talking about cloud as an enabler of business. What that actually means differs for every company because it depends on their specific needs and industry requirements.

Support for online education and e-learning has come to the fore as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the cloud has been pivotal in allowing learning to continue during lockdown. Some education providers have had to make the move to the cloud to facilitate their businesses during this period, while others had already built many of their applications in the cloud and continued with business as usual.

For example, we have had a longstanding partnership with The Training Room Online (TTRO), providing the expertise and support to assist in delivering world-class learning solutions to TTRO’s customers internationally. TTRO specialises in creating blended and digital learning experiences across the spectrum of lifelong learning, from early childhood development, to adult learning, to the world of work.

TTRO creates platforms to deliver learning experiences, most of which are hosted on AWS. Historically, TTRO segmented its customers and placed certain workloads in fit-for-purpose infrastructure. This was built using dedicated resources in local data centres. However, many of its enterprise customers had much higher requirements, and TTRO had to look at how it could architect its solution differently. AWS proved to be the best fit, providing all the tools TTRO needed.

The flexibility afforded by AWS, combined with the availability of different modules, enabled a highly resilient, highly scalable hosting architecture to support TTRO’s learning platform. AWS has enabled TTRO to consume whatever it needs at the click of a button, and build it into its learning solution on demand. Previously, TTRO was hampered by the lack of availability of certain services in traditional hosted infrastructure, or the high cost associated with building and licensing them.

In deciding to make the move to the cloud, TTRO understood that it specialises in creating learning experiences, and looked for a partner that had the same kind of expertise in its own area. iOCO’s certifications, skills and experience put us ahead of all competitors. We took the time to understand TTRO’s business in order to provide the right solution, going so far as to rebuild parallel environments to understand TTRO’s solution.

As more companies move into hyperscale environments like AWS, they should be looking for this level of commitment and service from their providers. We have gone far past the point where infrastructure is a consideration, and an effective use of technology now requires an understanding of how an app talks to all the different elements. The best cloud deployments start with an end-to-end understanding of a company’s needs and environment, and how they deliver their solution to their customers.

But don’t just take my word for it. TTRO’s Dominic Oettl recently spoke to TechCentral’s Duncan McLeod about the impact iOCO and AWS have made on TTRO’s business.

Listen to the podcast HERE