The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) adopted cloud computing prior to the release of this year's A Level results in a bid to boost the higher education applications process, it has been revealed. - See more at: http://www.storetec.net/news-blog/ucas-boosts-admission-process-using-cloud-computing

1. UCAS Boosts Admission Process Using Cloud
Computing
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The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) adopted
cloud computing prior to the release of this year's A Level results in
a bid to boost the higher education applications process, it has been
revealed.
Ten days before the publication date of August 15th 2013, the body
launched a public cloud infrastructure so that its IT infrastructure
could be scaled up to meet the demands of students.

2. Every year, UCAS processes more than 2.5 million university and
college applications and its website has to handle up to 180 logins per
second when the A Level results come out and their recipients begin to
react to them.
Consequently, a fast, efficient and expandable computer system is vital
if UCAS is to avoid having to deal with multiple crashes. However, it is
also important to scale this back down when the sudden peak in
demand subsides, as UCAS may not attract many hits at all for the rest
of the year and it is therefore impractical to spend vast sums of money
on a lot of hardware.

3. This is why the public cloud was deemed a suitable choice for the
organisation.
Chief operating officer at UCAS Steve Jeffree said: "The admissions
process can be extremely stressful for students. Their futures depend
on this move into higher education so we take our responsibility as the
facilitator of this process very seriously. It is for this reason that, in
2013, we chose to move the core of the UCAS confirmation and
clearing process to the cloud. The higher education sector will benefit
from the move to cloud computing for many years to come."

4. UCAS revealed last week that there had been a decrease on the
proportion of A Levels being awarded top grades, the second fall in two
years.
Some 26.3 per cent were given A or A*s, down from 26.6 per cent in
2012, although the overall pass rate increased to 98.1 per cent.
Storetec News/Blogs."http://www.storetec.net/news-blog/ucas-
boosts-admission-process-using-cloud-computing/" UCAS
Boosts Admission Process Using Cloud Computing. Aug 19, 2012.
Storetec.