School Admins Give the Cloud High Marks for Making Their Jobs Easier

By Peter Scott
TMCnet Contributor

The cloud is a boon for IT administrators in the education space. Often budget-constrained and overworked, IT staffers at schools have a challenging situation. But the cloud makes it easier for IT admins even if their jobs still are especially demanding.

That’s because, first of all, cloud computing allows IT admins to punch above their weight. By using the cloud, IT departments at educational institutions can buy into infrastructure and technology solutions that would normally be far beyond the budget of most school systems. The pay-as-you-go, only-what-you need nature of the cloud subscription model equalizes the playing field by enabling schools to use the same solutions as much larger and better funded organizations.

Second, the cloud frees up IT staff and educational institutions to focus on higher-value projects and IT functions that are particular to the needs of their school system instead of the troubleshooting and maintenance that would otherwise consume most of their time. When the cloud handles basic computing needs, school IT is freed up for more innovative and creative technology work.

Speaking of maintenance, the rise of the cloud is a big boon for IT teams at schools in terms of not having to constantly monitor patches and security flaws. All this now is handled in the cloud. So, too, is maintenance. These previously time-consuming tasks are now no longer a factor for school IT admins.

The cloud helps IT in terms of enabling them to continue working with the computers they have available, too. Previously, before the cloud, schools needed to upgrade equipment regularly to keep pace with increasing software and hardware demands.

Now that most of the work is done on the server level, however, there’s less need for new computers and bigger hard drives—everything is stored in the cloud, and speed increases and hardware upgrades are mostly taken care of by the cloud. IT just has to ensure that browsers are up to date and a few other issues, such as needed plug-ins, are current.

Overall, the cloud is a big win for IT staff at educational institutions. The IT departments at just about every organization benefit from the rise of the cloud, but especially resource-constrained IT at schools.