RAMP: 30 Clients in 15 Months All of Sierra-Cedar's hosted clients have now successfully migrated to AWS. It is with immense pride that I share the outstanding achievements of our recent Rapid AWS Migration Project (RAMP) and provide an overview of why we chose to...
Deploying SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) invariably involves converting data from existing systems into new applications. While data conversion presents an opportunity to preserve historical information for reporting and transactional processing within the new SaaS...
SaaS (Software as a Service) has become an essential part of the digital business landscape. By placing software applications in the cloud, organizations can increase efficiency, reduce costs, and benefit from improved functionality as well as anytime, anywhere...
Welcome to our educational blog! Today, we're diving into the significant updates slated for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) in the 24-25 Aid Year. These changes, a result of the Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA), represent a major shift from...
While I have participated in many great technology projects throughout my career, our recent project with the Alabama Commission on Higher Education (ACHE) was the most impactful and personally gratifying. This project helped to ensure that all students were given the...
If your organization is setting up a multi-account AWS environment, your first step is to design and configure your base environment. As part of that process, you will face many decisions about what tools and services will enable you to establish the foundation for...
The trend toward cloud transformation continues to build momentum as more companies move their workloads to the cloud in pursuit of increased efficiency, agility, and reduced risk. Gartner forecasts that global spending on public cloud services will grow 20.7% to...
If you’re deploying public cloud infrastructure at scale in your organization, you’ve likely encountered challenges when addressing issues such as security, policy governance, drift control, and operational efficiency. How do you support infrastructure deployments for...
Sierra-Cedar’s DevOps Services division assists clients in planning, implementing, migrating, and managing Infrastructure-as-Code in AWS and other major cloud service providers. Sierra-Cedar provides a wide range of services from the design and architecture of new...
Last month Sierra-Cedar launched a video program called, On Cloud 9 Conversations. The broadcast is meant to give a candid view into the Cloud journey of a Sierra-Cedar customer by having the client respond to nine interview questions. The featured client in our debut...
Despite facing daunting challenges over the past 18 months, our friends in higher education continue to strive for improvement. They aim to provide students with high visibility into their programs, and they aspire for students and their families to have real-time...
Saying ‘goodbye’ to your data center and moving to the Cloud is a big deal. It is like allowing someone else to take care of your car – you own it, you drive it, but someone else cleans it, maintains it, and powers it! The hardest part of moving your data to the Cloud...
If this pandemic has done anything, it has given the gift of time! Time to catch up with old friends, binge watch Netflix shows, and tackle the most mundane projects … like reviewing and cleaning your system data. The thought of cleaning your data may have you...
End user testing … a critical step in any system update or release, yet this activity is notoriously painful! Testing needs data, scripts, and tracking; and it is a prime candidate for automation. Yet automating testing is tricky and time-consuming. A few years ago,...
Moving your PeopleSoft application to the AWS Cloud can be a gamechanger as the benefits can revolutionize your IT department. However, the key to getting the most out of an AWS Cloud investment is to methodically design your PeopleSoft application inside the cloud to...
Looking to move your ERP application to the cloud? To get started, it’s important to understand the two most leveraged migration path alternatives that organizations take. In this post, we’ll take a look at both paths, the pros and cons, and provide tips for making...
For years, maintaining a central, on-premise data center was the norm for organizations with sensitive, proprietary, or top-secret data. Since 2010, though, increasing numbers of government entities have migrated to the cloud, leveraging the platform’s increased...
Hospitals face many challenges when capturing project costs—not the least of which includes disparate systems and processes that often result in incomplete and inaccurate information. Cost pressures and the need to validate all investments have brought increased...
Data Science Capabilities at Your Fingertips Most analytics tools are only capable of reporting on past events and showing trends. While helpful, it’s not actionable. Historically, predictive analytics required the specialized skills of data scientists and advanced...
Welcome to Part 5 of The Cloud Understood series. In this edition, I want to address questions and concerns from the clients of Sierra-Cedar. As you most likely already know, Sierra-Cedar is first and foremost a services company. We are built on the idea of and...