Moving your School to the Cloud

Its never been easier to move your school to the cloud. 3S can help and your school may even be eligible for funding.

Why is the cloud important?

The cloud describes systems or services that are hosted and managed online, rather than locally in the school building. Computers, including mobile devices and smartphones, now increasingly operate in this way.

Moving your systems and services to the cloud:

• has the potential to make services more useful and engaging

• can break down barriers you encounter with older systems, such as remote access

• can lead to a cost saving

• can be more secure

Some of your community will already be experiencing the benefits of having made the move to the cloud including parents, pupils and staff. They will now expect this kind of service in all aspects of their lives.

Benefits for schools

Economy - saving money

Moving to cloud-based services can reduce costs by:

• reducing licence costs – leading technology providers offer free-to-use cloud services, including communication tools and core office applications

• using cloud only user devices – cost effective and reliable devices, designed to link directly to cloud applications, are widely available and usually cheaper than the systems they replace

• using pay as you go services – some cloud-based services are charged on a pay as you go basis

• saving money on the energy required to run and cool on-site servers

Cloud based services could also help financial planning as you:

• move to predictable annual subscriptions

• may see a reduction in capital refresh costs - for example, reducing the need to replace old servers

• do not need to replace ‘cloud only’ devices as often, and it may extend the lifespan of older devices

Efficiency – saving teachers’ time

Moving to cloud-based services can:

• give staff the flexibility to access services from wherever they are, using the devices that are most convenient for them

• support collaboration by helping staff to easily share and co-author documents, files, lesson content and plans – reducing duplication of effort

• make it easier for teachers and pupils to research, analyse and use new curriculum resources

• reduce the time it takes to access data and applications anywhere, due to faster log in times

Effectiveness – what you can do

Moving to cloud-based services can make it easier to access applications and content, wherever there is an internet connection:

• reducing the workload of local technical support teams, as applications can be automatically updated and managed

• mitigating the risk of files and data being lost

It could also support flexible working as you can access data remotely at any time.