Schools are finding innovative use cases for cloud-managed applications, including hosted identity management systems and distribution of ebooks. As institutions try to solve complicated problems with these implementations, they need peace of mind that their IT infrastructure is up to the task and resilient in the face of malware and system crashes.
North Carolina school system implements cloud-based identity management solution
In an effort to give students and their parents, along with educators and administrators, access to resources from different locations and devices, the North Carolina education system recently rolled out a statewide cloud-based identity management project. Called the NC Education Cloud, the solution is designed to make it easier to use many applications and services.
More specifically, most students have multiple accounts to manage, and keeping track of usernames and passwords has been an ongoing struggle. The problem is more acute with teachers and staff. With NC Education Cloud, they can access all accounts with just a single set of credentials, via the system’s single sign-on functionality.
North Carolina’s education leadership carefully selected a solution that would be usable by a wide range of age groups. Officials sought a user-friendly interface and a cloud-based delivery model that would remove the strain of having to manage and upgrade on-site infrastructure. The NC Education Cloud will replace the slow, manual account data migration processes of its predecessor.
Many K-12 institutions upgrading IT systems with cloud-managed applications
North Carolina’s foray into the cloud shows how K-12 institutions are realizing the benefits of remotely hosted and managed software. Many other school systems are tapping into the cloud to meet different requirements.
For example, the cloud provides an easier way for schools to perform disaster recovery and communicate with parents. A recent report found that 40 percent of schools use cloud applications to store data, and that they were experiencing 20 percent savings on IT costs as a result of moving assets to the cloud. By 2016, schools could be spending more than one-third of their IT budgets on cloud technologies.
Cloud applications can consolidate data and make it readily accessible to students, parents and teachers. As schools build IT infrastructure to better serve everyone, they can depend on restore on reboot software to keep systems secure and properly functioning. If anything seems off about a configuration, or if an endpoint suddenly has issues performing normally, administrators can simply restart the affected assets and restore to a safe disk state. Ultimately, schools can use these solutions to realize the financial and operational value of the cloud, without stumbling over possible support issues.