The Power of the Cloud for Your School District
If you work in a school district, you probably have a good understanding of what cloud services can offer. You also have likely seen what traditional infrastructure looks likes, sounds like (those noisy server rooms), and the experience of when it is not working.
School districts are unlike many other types of organizations. Most individuals do not realize that they carry the load of an enterprise level organization, hosting thousands if not tens of thousands of devices. In addition to the quantity of devices and complex infrastructure, districts are averaging over 2,500 different tools to facilitate the educational experience for their students.
School districts are supporting students, devices, and thousands of technology tools to drive achievement... but is there a better way to manage it all?
Let’s start by introducing a few ways your school district can benefit from cloud infrastructure versus traditional infrastructure:
1) Utilizing Cloud for Deployments and Repurposing Devices
The deployment of new devices or repurposing devices can often take hours for a single device. Utilizing cloud deployment services (such as Microsoft Autopilot) gives IT departments the ability to have devices ready in minutes.
Devices can be part of a cloud management that is predesignated from manufacturers and have devices ready for new users coming out of the box (with a few reboots). This allows IT departments to have the standard configuration they need to make support more predictable and avoid human error which can at times expose districts to security risks.
These same tools are available for repurposing devices as well. This allows IT departments to quickly repurpose devices for new users and cut down on onboarding time or new hires to be without a device.
2) Using the Cloud for Redundancy
School districts rely on internet connection more than ever; thousands of devices, thousands of solutions running, and users running videos and streaming – not to mention students and staff having to stream from home back to district resources.
The bandwidth challenges are real. This is where the scalability in cloud brings solutions that allow schools to have more control, redundancy, and security. With solutions like SD-WAN, schools can utilize hardware and software solutions to determine how internet traffic is prioritized, automatically switch over to backup internet lines in outages, and determine what internet provider specific types of traffic utilizes (i.e., QOS, student data, etc.).
3) IT Automation
Your district's IT department will love you when you provide them with more tools to manage their responsibilities. Tools that help IT departments monitor and prevent problems (i.e., network outages, etc.).
These tools empower IT teams to automate processes, generate alerts for issues, and data backup in the cloud. These tools streamline backup configurations and provide a clear view of network topology to help isolate issues (especially on large networks).
Many of these tools can integrate with ticketing systems and even offer self-healing to give your IT team more time back.
These are just a few ways your school district can start the transition to cloud services that bring value and give your IT department more time back – allowing them to spend more time in the areas that matter, like in the classroom helping teachers.
Sources:
https://www.bigleaf.net/product-howitworks/
https://www.cbtnuggets.com/blog/technology/networking/sd-wan-what-it-is-and-how-it-works
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/autopilot/windows-autopilot
https://www.eschoolnews.com/district-management/2021/05/07/how-cloud-adoption-is-changing-public-school-education/#:~:text=A%20March%202020%20study%20showed,curriculum%20content%20in%20the%20cloud.
https://www.skyward.com/getmedia/3439cff1-1202-4e2f-980d-1d1e5944418d/Rays-Education-protection.aspx?disposition=a