Cloud

The Benefits of Learning as a Service (LaaS)

Your Thinking Cap LMS is delivered as an all-in-one service provided on a monthly or yearly subscription. You’ll never need to worry about maintaining hardware or updating software – it’s all included in your subscription. Once it’s set up, we take care of the software, hosting and monitoring.

Here’s what that means for you.

No downtime

You can count on your system running smoothly 24/7 because we’re always behind the scenes taking care of the hardware, software, security, and updates

No surprises

You get one bill, one vendor, and one consistent experience

No worries

If you need a hand or have a question, support is always close at hand

Auto Scaling and Fault Tolerant

We’re committed to delivering the fastest, smoothest and most dependable service for your LMS. That’s why we use Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS, the largest and most powerful hosting platforms in the world. It lets us deliver your LMS services on the same platforms that delivers Amazon, Skype, Office 365, Bing, and Xbox. It means we can offer you a service level agreement of 99.95%. That’s about as high as it gets.

It won’t slow down

Resource needs can be unpredictable. You may have 100 learners on your system one day and 5,000 the next. So we engineered our LMS from the ground up to be able to accommodate this unpredictability. By being able to ramp up the resources whenever they’re needed, your LMS can handle any number of users and any number of learning objects at any given time. This ‘bursting’ in power is what makes your Thinking Cap LaaS great.

It’s as secure as it gets

Your security is of the utmost importance. You can count on us to safeguard your data as if it were our own. We diligently monitor your data and keep it right here in Canada for your protection and safety. As well, Microsoft has made an industry-leading commitment to the protection and privacy of your data. They were the first cloud provider recognized by the European Union’s data protection authorities for their commitment to rigorous EU privacy laws. Microsoft was also the first major cloud provider to adopt the new international cloud privacy standard, ISO 27018.

Local Data Storage and Global Content Delivery

Azure runs on a worldwide network of data centres across 21 regions. Even mainland China. Protecting your data and respecting data privacy it core when creating a service in the cloud. This is why we match the storage of customer data to a single political border and perform backups in data centers that are both within those political boundaries but still no less than 500 miles from the primary data center.

That is leaner data. Course content and other resources is another matter. These we want as close to the learner as possible. To achieve this Thinking Cap stores these in a Content Delivery Network across the globe. So when your learner takes a course from Hong Kong, London or Duluth, they’re loading course files from a server close to them. This means low latency and great experience. The data for their account and the record of their experience is housed in your national data centre but the heavy image, audio and video files are served locally. And because Thinking Cap is a service, it’s all set up in advance and won’t cost extra.

Industry Leading Security

We take security very seriously. This includes application security inside Thinking Cap and physical security in our data centres. Whether you need to report to the FDA on 21 CFR Part 11 or are bound by PCI ecommerce standards, you need to be sure that your data is safe. It is. Below is a list of the independently verified security compliance certifications that protect your data:

• ISO 27001/27002
• SOC 1/SSAE 16/ISAE 3402 and SOC 2
• Cloud Security Alliance CCM
• FedRAMP
• FISMA
• FBI CJIS (Azure Government)
• PCI DSS Level 1
• United Kingdom G-Cloud
• Australian Government IRAP
• Singapore MTCS Standard
• HIPAA
• EU Model Clauses
• Food and Drug Administration 21 CFR Part 11
• FERPA
• FIPS 140-2
• CCCPPF
• MLPS

At Thinking Cap, we layer on application security to the bedrock hosting security:

Role-based security

Roles can be applied at any level of the branch tree

Password management

Password freshness and complexity rules and practices

MFA

Multi-factor authentication options

SSO (Single Sign On)

OAuth2, SAML2 and Open ID Federated Single Sign On.

Intrusion detection

In-depth Logging and Intrusion Detection

Identity veritification

Activity-level identity verification tools

Obfuscation

Obfuscation of user data from both display and reporting

If your organization needs FDA 21 CFR Part 11 compliance, click here.

Superior Support

We monitor that your services are running 24 x7. We also employ detection software that lets us know if an error occurs often before you’re aware of it. We make it easy for you to find us. Support is available by phone or online from 7am to 9pm Eastern Standard.

Learning as a Service is a commitment to giving you a solution – not just a bag of tools. Our support team is a group of highly-trained experts who know the software inside and out so you get the personalized help you need, fast.

Talk to us 7am EST to 9pm EST

Our team knows who you are and how you’re using our software. We’re mentors and trainers and we’re here to help you succeed with your Thinking Cap LMS. Call us anytime, as often as you need to. If you need us after 9pm, emergency phone support is available 24/7/365.

Open a ticket anytime

If you don’t have time to talk, take advantage of our amazing ticketing system. It shepherds your requests to the right team members and keeps you in the loop every step of the way. Our web-based system is always available and it’s packed with helpful videos and tools.

Know we’ve got your back

The most important support we offer is the kind you don’t even see. We’re always behind the scenes, proactively monitoring your services to make sure they’re running 24/7. Our detection software lets us know if an error occurs – often before you’re aware of it. At the first sign of trouble our engineers will keep you in the communication loop even though your learners aren’t seeing any trouble at all.