TECHNO GEEK

On-premise IT systems in schools – time for change?

NIGEL MILLIGAN – provider of proactive IT support to schools – on the mysterious reasons why schools are still nervous of stepping into the cloud-based world that is waiting to improve almost everything

For many years it’s been very difficult for school staff to be able to access everything they need when working from home or at off-site meetings; the use of a VPN and remote access is just another set of things that can go wrong and create more problems for IT support to have to fix.

There are a number of different reasons why an organisation – a business or a school - will opt for onpremise systems and servers that are based on site, physically in the building; the traditional Windows domain server and client machines remain a very common solution for many organisations.

One of the reasons schools choose this approach is that they only know what they know. Many IT companies supporting schools still want to up-sell expensive, onpremise, servers and do their best to hold schools back from advancing into a cloud-based world that will enable staff and students to work anytime and anywhere they wish to.

I often hear, when in conversation with schools, “We’ve always done it that way!” and I’ve often been told,

“We’d love to do that but we haven’t got someone like you who can help us do that!”.

At the start of the COVID-19 lockdown, in March 2020, it quickly became apparent that those who were already cloud-based, had no problem making the transition to home working and remote learning for students. Many non cloud-based schools quickly realised they had been provided with an ineffective onpremise solution by their IT provider.

This was an ideal opportunity to migrate to the cloud but, again, IT support companies didn’t promote the move to Google or Microsoft Cloud options for free; they set up messy, complicated, VPN access to on-premise servers. In April 2019 the DfE published guidance on cloudbased options for schools. The information provided clearly highlights the benefits for schools in moving away from on-premise devices. The main benefits are: ● Economy - saving money. ● Efficiency - saving teachers’ time. ● Effectiveness - what you can do. ● Security - can be much more secure. As an IT support professional I find it difficult to comprehend why anyone wouldn’t consider retiring on site servers and opting for cloud-based solutions instead. There are so many benefits to not having a server on site that needs to be kept physically secure as well as having to There are so maintain the hardware and software. many benefits For example, the free option of Google Workspace for Education has everything to not having a a school needs, and works on any device. server on site There’s also the option to convert older Windows devices into Chromebooks to save schools even more money. At the moment there are occasions where the school MIS and finance still need a server on site to host their applications but many MIS providers now have fully cloud-based solutions and others have longer term plans to migrate their solutions to the cloud. So, in a few years time, there will be no reason at all why schools cannot be 100% cloud-based. What will the reasons for not making the change be then, I wonder…