Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico

Results

• Cloud system enabled Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico to reopen in 17 days rather than months
• Payroll capabilities remained functional, so campus employees were paid during extended crisis
• Disaster recovery was a key goal when the university initially moved to the cloud

Summary

We had Hurricane Maria on the 20 of December. Puerto Rico got hit by a hurricane, and it was a natural disaster. Puerto Rico didn't have telecommunication, didn't have water, and didn't have electricity. But we had two generators, and we had a water tank. We also had analog lines of telephone that we were able to communicate with the people in the states.

Details

We are in the cloud, the Ellucian cloud. For us, that was very important, because if we had the system on premise, it would be a different story. We were up in two days, and we were able to run the payroll for the employees. That was very important for our president, because people were having tough times.

And we were open in 17 days, and that was a record, because all the other universities took two months, three months. Some of them didn't even open. We thought about the disaster when we moved to the cloud. If another university reached out to me and asked me what to do in case of emergency, I will let them know that to be in the cloud, to consider being in the cloud, that is very important, because your system won't be interrupted by anything.