On-Prem Performance, Cloud Simplicity

On this page, we'll explain everything you need to know about our fully hosted AppsAnywhere Cloud solution. We'll cover the benefits of AppsAnywhere Cloud versus a traditional customer-owned deployment model, along with the technical information you might need to know.

We've been in the Higher Ed Industry for a long time and our customers always demanded the on-premises nature of our products and what we've seen especially in the last three years is a total shift away from that. - Pete Cooke, AppsAnywhere COO

You can find an introductory overview of AppsAnywhere Cloud over on our blog.

Our Community

For further technical information, join our AppsAnywhere Community forum where customers from across the world of Higher Ed discuss all things AppsAnywhere.

Key benefits of AppsAnywhere Cloud

In our experience, Higher Ed demands flexibility. And so, while we're committed to offering AppsAnywhere users control and choice over where and how our products are hosted, there are key benefits to AppsAnywhere Cloud:

  • Effortless Upgrades

    Effortless Upgrades

    With AppsAnywhere Cloud, you can sit back while we take care of all your upgrades, so you can benefit from new features as soon as they're ready to use.

  • Maintenance Free

    Maintenance Free

    We'll take care of all the server-side administration and management. No need to worry about deployment, maintenance, and upgrades.

  • Best of Both

    Best of Both

    Receive the same great on-premises performance paired with all the cloud simplicity you'd expect.

  • Specialist Support

    Specialist Support

    Receive devoted support from our specialist Support and Customer Success teams on hand to provide you with support for your AppsAnywhere platform.

  • Simple Affordability

    Simple Affordability

    Unlike other products on the market, AppsAnywhere Cloud has no variable usage costs. One simple annual price for the complete package.

  • Streamlined Experience

    Streamlined Experience

    A simplified implementation and onboarding experience, where you can focus on outputs, outcomes and achieving your own goals.

We understand, especially in recent times, that Higher Ed IT teams are stretched for time, with increasingly competing priorities. Take advantage of AppsAnywhere Cloud and let us take care of all the server-side, backend administration, so you can focus on improving your students’ outcomes!

AppsAnywhere Cloud specification

AppsAnywhere Cloud is built on our Microsoft Azure-backed platform, which commits to an industry-standard minimum uptime of 99.9%. During your Implementation Journey, we’ll choose the most local region to your institution, giving you peace of mind over your data and the performance, too.

To guarantee improved performance, we’ll help you set up an AppsAnywhere Precache File Share, too. This lightweight, 100GB local file share for caching improves the performance of your solution, especially when using our application virtualization component in your managed device estate.

More information can be found on this here.

Technical info:

AppsAnywhere Cloud utilizes multiple Microsoft Azure components such as Azure Virtual Machines, Databases, Load Balancers, Networking, and Storage. AppsAnywhere Cloud components are geo-redundant and split across different underlying hosts within an Azure datacentre. All hosting is in accordance with Azure compliance documentation.

Monitoring and notifications:

We understand the business-critical nature of AppsAnywhere with IT and students alike. That’s why for AppsAnywhere Cloud, we’ve put in place monitoring rules to highlight any potential security, platform, backup, or storage issues. In this situation, alert rules would automatically notify the AppsAnywhere Platform and Support teams if any triggers are raised.

When applicable, AppsAnywhere will announce issues that may affect hosted products and services provided by AppsAnywhere. We recommend that customers subscribe to our Support team’s links below to receive notifications of releases, features, and service announcements:

Authentication:

AppsAnywhere Cloud uses any SAML v2.0 Identity provider linked to your directory, to allow users to access AppsAnywhere. Administrators can configure access to applications based on SAML attribute values available/provided in the authentication response.

Customer support and upgrades

Like with our on-premises or Bring Your Own Cloud offering, customer support for AppsAnywhere Cloud is covered by our AppsAnywhere Support Workflow.

We also offer and operate the same Upgrade process, with the main difference being that it’s all taken care of on our side without any heavy lifting needed from your team, so you can take advantage of all the latest features in our product.

AppsAnywhere will also maintain and upgrade all hosted servers, components, and services. Customers will be notified in advance, and written approval is required, for any change that has the potential to affect service.

Service Level Agreements (SLA)

AppsAnywhere Cloud Online Portal: We’ve configured Virtual Machines to the recommended specification, using Premium SSD storage and a Load Balancer, to provide traffic distribution between multiple Virtual Machines. As there are multiple Azure services used to provide this component, the overall Microsoft minimum uptime of 99.9% is provided. However, many services benefit from a minimum uptime of 99.99%.

While AppsAnywhere Virtual Machines do not contain any critical information or data relevant to the service, the Azure Backup service is used as a precaution. The backup policy is configured to perform daily backups at 02:00 (time zone is set based on your location). Instant recovery snapshots are held for 2 days, and daily backup points are on a 30-day retention.

SQL Server/Databases: AppsAnywhere Cloud utilizes the Microsoft Azure SQL Elastic Cluster standard tier PaaS (platform as a service) offering. Microsoft Azure provide a minimum 99.99% uptime availability for this particular service.

The SQL databases used by the AppsAnywhere products are configured with a backup policy of 7-day PITR (point in time restore), 24-hour difference backup, the first backup of each week is retained for that week and the first backup of each month is retained for that month.

Alert rules are in place to notify the AppsAnywhere Support team of any backup failures should they occur. In addition, monitoring rules are configured to evaluate the Elastic Cluster usage and alert the teams if it reaches 80% of its available capacity for a sustained period.

For more information about AppsAnywhere Cloud setup, SLAs, and our customer support workflow, please visit the links below:

SLA information can be found here: AppsAnywhere Support Workflow – AppsAnywhere Support

Details on AppsAnywhere Cloud setup can be found here: Server Deployment and Configuration

AppsAnywhere Cloud Specifications Brochure

(PDF, 406 KB)

In this brochure, we’ll explain everything you need to know about our
fully hosted AppsAnywhere Cloud solution. We’ll cover the benefits of
AppsAnywhere Cloud versus a traditional customer-owned deployment
model, along with the technical information you might need to know.

Download file - AppsAnywhere Cloud Specifications Brochure

Hosting to Suit You

Students learn in various ways, and we understand institutions deliver their academic software in unique ways too. That’s why we offer a range of hosting choices, including customer-managed (on-premises or BYO cloud platform) or our all-in-one AppsAnywhere Cloud solution.

Learn More About AppsAnywhere Cloud