Firefly Boosts Student and Teacher Experiences in the AWS Cloud
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Customer Company Size
SME
Region
- Europe
Country
- United Kingdom
Product
- Firefly Learning Software
Tech Stack
- Microsoft Technology Stack
- Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS)
- AWS Business Support
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Customer Satisfaction
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Databases
Applicable Industries
- Education
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
- Sales & Marketing
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- Data Science Services
About The Customer
Firefly Learning is an online tool for teachers, students, and parents. It aims to create better outcomes through more flexible learning, allowing teachers to set work, students to access resources, and parents to track their children’s progress. The co-founders of Firefly Learning, Joe Mathewson and Simon Hay, developed the first version of their learning management software when they were high school students. They saw a way of bringing together teachers, students, and parents to make learning more effective. Today, hundreds of leading schools around the world, like Eton College in the UK, Dulwich College in Singapore, and Caulfield Grammar School in Australia, all use Firefly.
The Challenge
Firefly Learning, an online tool for teachers, students, and parents, was initially deployed by installing its software on Windows servers locally at each school. This setup presented numerous challenges, as supporting schools largely consisted of solving problems with their underlying infrastructure, such as dealing with backup issues and domain name system failures. As more schools adopted Firefly, the issues multiplied. The software was installed on hundreds of servers, and the task of supporting them all became overwhelming. Firefly needed a solution that would help join up the learning experience and allow for easier and more efficient support and management.
The Solution
Firefly started looking at cloud technology from the beginning, with a view to eventually delivering its software as a service. They found that Amazon Web Services (AWS) had the most mature offering, and by 2013 Firefly was launching its software in the cloud—starting with small schools that didn’t have the IT capacity to run on-premises installations. For example, whereas before the Firefly team used to run and backup SQL servers, now they automate the process using Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). As a result, the infrastructure team hasn’t had to expand even as the client base has grown rapidly. Firefly now serves customers around the world through AWS Regions in Dublin, Sydney, Singapore, and the US.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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