Expert Insights for the Education Sector
Cantium has over 40 years’ experience of providing fully managed IT support for schools. Throughout this time we’ve seen innovations in cloud technology, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and the school office. Whether you’re assessing your school’s MIS, or looking for cost-savings by moving to the cloud, our insights can provide you with the knowledge and guidance to aid your decision-making, ensuring you can be confident in your school’s IT infrastructure and technology strategy.
Alongside our Microsoft Gold Partner status, Cantium provides IT services to over 550 schools and trusts in the UK. We keep up to date with the latest developments in education technology and provide you with insights from across the sector on how you can enhance learning, discover efficiencies and improve cyber resilience.
Cloud: Anytime, anywhere data
Undoubtedly, the disruption caused by COVID-19 has highlighted a need for flexible infrastructure that can facilitate the switch to remote working and learning, often at short notice. Hosted and cloud-based solutions are increasingly becoming a well-established and cost-effective way to achieve more flexibility without investing huge amounts of money on infrastructure. But, the road to adoption isn’t always easy and one of the biggest hurdles to implementing cloud-based solutions is legacy technology, processes, and services.
SIMS is a key example. On-premise SIMS can be expensive to run, difficult to change and it requires regular maintenance. Hosting SIMS locally exposes educators to hidden costs, whether it be the in-house resources, physical servers or upgrades that need to be managed onsite multiple times a year. If systems like SIMS are hosted on a server then it also makes them more susceptible to cyber-attacks. Incidentally, this means that schools become reliant on individuals with the expertise, knowledge, and time to patch, maintain and manage their outdated applications. These people are becoming harder to find.
Migrating systems such as SIMS to a cloud-based environment gives schools greater flexibility and the power of anytime, anywhere, accessible data. If teaching staff are off site and need to access a young person’s record quickly, as long as they have an internet connection, they can. In addition, functionality for other applications can be built into the environment to facilitate things like remote parents’ evenings.
Cloud-based systems are hosted by a third-party provider and this frees IT resources from the demands of ongoing maintenance on site. Instead, the provider is responsible for aspects such as security, updates and upgrades. Enhanced security protocols such as multi-factor authentication can be offered, improving your schools’ cyber resilience. With maintenance taken care of, educators are able to stay ahead of issues in a more cost-effective and timely way, and at the same time, ensuring compliance with cyber security policies and legislation.
Access to information anytime, anywhere is a must, especially as the world becomes more remote. For many educators, if they haven’t already, the switch to cloud-based technologies should be a key part of their strategy.
How to Ensure that Your Microsoft 365 Environment is Optimised
Our insight on Microsoft 365 environments goes into detail on how having a modern, secure and well-performing Microsoft 365 set up can enable an effective digital workplace.
With high-level detail on the areas you should review to optimise your environment, our article will help you to assess your environment and make positive changes towards becoming modernised and data-focused.
Read more by clicking the button below.
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Working with Cantium means that public funds continue to support front-line public services. We believe in profit for a purpose and giving back to services that support our communities
