A Cloud Guru (Linux Academy) vs Blackbaud Award Management (formerly AcademicWorks)

Likelihood to Recommend

If your organization is technical-based and offers its employees different online courses to enhance their knowledge, then A Cloud Guru will be perfect for you. There are multiple courses available from different cloud platforms. The platform is easy to use and navigate and does not require much knowledge. Even if you do not have basic technical knowledge, the courses available in A Cloud Guru are designed in such a manner that a non-technical person will understand the concept easily.

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Swarup Sangale

Strategic Partner Management Senior Analyst

AccentureInformation Technology & Services, 10,001+ employees

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This system has all the intentions of being fantastic. It is a great system if you have scholarships that are blindly rated or scored, or if you have multiple users with a few scholarships each. However, as a college with hundreds of scholarships that have 200-300 qualified students for each one, it is difficult to have a blind process. Plus, if the university gave our college the ability to edit some things, they would have to give those permissions to every person with a login. Needless to say, the system is not quite equipped for multiple users within one university who all have different editing privileges. However, as cumbersome as it has been to learn and manipulate for our purposes, it has allowed us to award more funds than any year prior due to the ease of having all of the student data in one place.

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Ashley Milton

Alumni Development Manager, College of Education

Florida State UniversityEducation Management, 1001-5000 employees

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Pros

The team at A Cloud Guru is excellent at responding to user feedback that is submitted through their website.
The content created is well organized and aligns to certification paths.
The content is accessible on mobile and web platforms, which is great for learning on the go.

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Verified User

Executive in Information Technology

Health, Wellness and Fitness Company, 10,001+ employees

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All colleges and universities have differences in the way scholarships are awarded at their schools. AcademicWorks listens to the individual needs of each college/university/scholarship provider and will either add system enhancements or help users to find ways to best utilize the system to meet their needs/requirements.
The AcademicWorks help desk is very good about support. They are timely in contact and work to resolve issues quickly and effectively.
AcademicWorks has worked closely with our IT Department to ensure that the imports and the system will work efficiently despite changes and updates.
Students need to only complete one application to be automatically matched to hundreds of scholarship opportunities. This is a very efficient use of the applicant's time and efforts to apply for scholarships.

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Rhonda Seyfried

Scholarship Manager

Tarrant County CollegeHigher Education, 1001-5000 employees

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Cons

More material on other cloud providers GCP, Azure, Huawei.
Extend the sandboxes to other cloud providers not only AWS.
Include more material for non-technical people, sometimes the sales teams are completely lost in the platform but they would like to learn about it.

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Leo Quiroa

Machine Learning Engineer

Blue Orange DigitalInformation Technology & Services, 11-50 employees

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Ability to personalize applications - we serve many companies, and we get requests all the time to use their logo, but we can't do that in AcademicWorks.
Selective reviews - some review committees don't want to review specific parts of applications, but we can't pick and choose which questions are reviewable for specific opportunities.

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Rosisella Blakney

Scholarship Coordinator

Greater Kansas City Community FoundationPhilanthropy, 51-200 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

Yes

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Starting Price

$0 per month

A Cloud Guru (Linux Academy) Editions & Modules

Edition

Free	$0.00¹
Personal Basic	$31.59 ($379.00)²
Personal Plus	$41.59 ($499.00)²
Business Basic	$41.59 ($499.00)²
Business Plus	$58.25 ($699.00)²

per month
per month (per year)

Additional Pricing Details

Contact Sales for Enterprise Pricing. https://acloudguru.com/solutions/business

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Starting Price

—

Blackbaud Award Management (formerly AcademicWorks) Editions & Modules

—

Additional Pricing Details

—

Support Rating

A Cloud Guru (Linux Academy) 9.0

Based on 1 answer

The support team of A Cloud Guru is quite quick. There are scenarios where A Cloud Guru was not working in my organization. We reached out to their support team and they quickly resolved the issue. Also, if any individual is facing issues accessing A Cloud Guru, their support team is quick to resolve the issue.

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Swarup Sangale

Strategic Partner Management Senior Analyst

AccentureInformation Technology & Services, 10,001+ employees

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Blackbaud Award Management (formerly AcademicWorks) 8.0

Based on 2 answers

I lean on our centralized Foundation for support related to Blackbaud Award Management. However, any time I've had a question they couldn't answer, they were able to get the support quickly and efficiently. I give an 8, versus a 9 or 10, because our centralized office has had some requests in for changes to the system that have not been made. Some parts of the system are not working for our purposes, and we've asked for some changes that should be doable. However, the time it takes to get universal changes made is quite long

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Ashley Milton

Alumni Development Manager, College of Education

Florida State UniversityEducation Management, 1001-5000 employees

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Alternatives Considered

The main differentiator was the contents as we were interested in a cloud platform other similar platforms did not have the below: it is very good to establish cloud learning development plans and then track them and manage them for the team. The platform supports learning tracks, exams, and sandboxes with all major cloud providers guarantees that you don't get an accidental charge as a result of [the] testing and exploring the cloud

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Verified User

Manager in Professional Services

Computer Networking Company, 1001-5000 employees

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Easy to identify eligible applicants, great features, ongoing enhancements, and fantastic customer service. Overall, learning to run the system and think like the system has been a hurdle, it's not always user-friendly on the admin side. The more I learn the more it works for me. The software allows for an easy student user experience.

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Ashli Murray

ESG Case Manager

Volunteers of AmericaFinancial Services, 11-50 employees

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Return on Investment

Engagement scores around investment in L&D have increased.
There's excitement around upcoming changes to our technology instead of fear we have seen in the past.
We feel confident we will be able to deliver these new technologies - although we are at the start of our journey.

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Verified User

Manager in Professional Services

Financial Services Company, 201-500 employees

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It has provided a positive ROI in our scholarship management, without having to outsource this function in our department.
The help we get from the support team is phenomenal that yearly set up can be done with a few days.
For what we get done with it, it is a good investment.

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Yma-Richel Nabong, MBA

Assistant Director of Financial Aid

UC Hastings College of the LawHigher Education, 201-500 employees

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A Cloud Guru (Linux Academy) vs Blackbaud Award Management (formerly AcademicWorks)