Welcome to the Amazon Cloud!

general

We've been busy working on migrating the WebSuite2™ system to Amazon Web Services. Last night (Thursday, June 13th) we successfully cut over to the new platform!

Amazon Cloud® provides many valuable improvements to WebSuite2™. Here are some key features:

• Performance. We can precisely monitor system performance and allocate more resources at any time. In fact, the system will automatically add resources as needed. You should see a boost in the responsiveness of the system as you are searching for records, running reports or your members are navigating your website.
  
  
• Co-location services. If, for any reason, the WebSuite2™ service is unavailable from Amazon in one area of the country, the service would automatically be available from a different area - with no down time. The system is automatically replicating the database in two locations at all times.
  
  
• Backups. The database is also continuously being backed up. A snapshot is taken every minute.
  
  
• Security. We set everything up in what is called a Virtual Private Cloud. Think of it like a private building that has a wall around the outside, highly limiting access.
  
  
• Scaling. Amazon services can rapidly scale up and down. So, if demand for the system increases dramatically, Amazon will spool up additional servers, which allows WebSuite2 to handle more requests. So let's say you send out an E-Bulletin asking all of your members to go to your website. If they all show up at once, the system will be able to handle the increased load.
  
  
• Future services. Amazon has a host of other services that we plan to incorporate into WebSuite2™. Their Simple Email Service (SES) will allow us to leverage Amazon's massive infrastructure to do email broadcasting. They also have a payments service, to handle payment processing online. And more...

We hope you are as excited as we are to have all of these new capabilities!