SCHENECTADY, N.Y. — Transfinder has tapped into cloud hosting to provide uninterrupted service to clients in the busy days leading up to and during the new school year.

Cloud hosting is the practice of running Web applications in a "cloud" — a collection of external, virtual servers that are interconnected. It provides a resource that is infinitely scalable, reliable and available, with little or no regard to a system's underlying technology or physical location.

The service, Infofinder i, enables parents to see their children’s bus stop information on the school district's Website. This provides measurable cost savings by reducing phone calls to districts, the company said. At peak usage on Aug. 23, Infofinder i handled 41,000 unique visitors and 2,400 simultaneous requests per minute.

"Two years ago cloud hosting was not available, but today we can use industry proven software to create applications that can be hosted in the cloud. This enables us to react rapidly to customer needs by using the latest technologies to provide on-demand service in an infinitely scalable and reliable manner. For example, on Monday as the new school year approached, parents across the country entered a total of 178,623 address searches," said Jay Rourke, vice president of technology for Transfinder.