Moving Your School To The Cloud

It is almost certain that your school has begun its journey to the cloud – whether that’s just through using Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace for email or going much further to introduce and integrate cloud services into more areas of your school operations and teaching practice.

In the latest of our ‘Focus on’ series of webinars, Matthew Coleman-Hamilton, Head of Digital Development, explained some of the benefits of embracing cloud services, the impact on teaching and learning, as well as daily school administration. Potentially making your services more useful and engaging, and removing barriers to remote access, the cloud can also enable new pedagogies and forms of curriculum; changing the way your teachers can teach and improving the way your students learn and use digital skills.​

It’s not all about cost

The typical entry point into cloud services for email and data storage, through Microsoft and Google, are free and there are other attractive cost savings, such as:

• Reduced license costs – leading technology providers offer free-to-use cloud services, including communication tools and core office applications​.
• Using cloud-only user devices – designed to link directly to cloud applications these cost effective and reliable devices are widely available and usually cheaper than the hardware they replace​.
• Using pay-as-you-go services – some cloud-based services are charged on a pay-as-you-go basis​.
• Reducing energy spend – saving money on the energy required to run and cool on-site infrastructure such as servers and storage solutions.
• Being more efficient and effective – cloud applications can be less technically complex, reducing need for local technical support.
• Supporting financial planning – moving to predictable annual subscriptions can help effective budgeting and reduce the capital refresh costs that come with replacing old servers​ for example.

However, moving to the cloud should not be a purely financial decision, as there are greater benefits such as improving efficiency and flexibility for your staff who will be able to access your systems from wherever they are. Reducing the risk and impact of a possible cyber-attack, by moving your data to the cloud, can also bring you greater peace of mind.

Teachers who trust technology, make use of technology

When your staff trust the technology available to them, they will make better use of it, but how can you put solid foundations in place to build a successful cloud strategy? You should approach your journey to the cloud as a change process and consult and involve your staff throughout. Their general enthusiasm and willingness to proceed will drive your success; particularly the encouragement of “Digital Champions”.  The DfE has recently published meeting digital and technology standards in schools and colleges which provides a good benchmark to measure yourself against. Further standards will follow.

How we can help your cloud journey

At Entrust, we have undergone our own cloud journey, therefore as well as providing expert guidance on implementing cloud solutions within schools, we also speak from personal experience. There are a variety of options to consider with regards to different cloud platforms, applications, and licensing models. We can advise on what is best for your school’s short-term needs, longer-term strategy and how to manage the change with your staff and students.

As a Microsoft Global Training Partner, we recognise that each school’s journey, and the support you require on that journey, is unique. From discovery to embedding new methodology through to full digital transformation, our EdTech experts will work with you to review your existing infrastructure and digital strategy to maximise the value of a migration to the cloud and the impact to you school or MAT. Get in touch to learn more.

Our Envisage Cloud offering will migrate your user and device management into the Microsoft 365 Azure platform and migrate your data to the cloud through OneDrive, Teams and SharePoint. Envisage Cloud can scale from single local authority maintained schools (and single schools academies) through to Multi Academy Trusts (MATS). Through Envisage Cloud – or a separate migration programme – we can also help MATs rationalise their Microsoft 365 tenancies, where the typical formation and growth of MATs have left many supporting multiple M365 environments.

Join our ‘Focus on… keeping children safe in education webinar

Sign-up for our next event on Thursday 27th April at 3pm where we will be discussing the important topic of keeping children safe in education.  You can register for your free place by clicking here.