Cloud-based tools are becoming common in K-12 education sector. Here are key considerations for selecting options and implementing fully operational systems.

The cloud has become an increasingly appealing option for K-12 schools, with 67% of buildings reporting that they’ve implemented at least some form of cloud-based tool. Indeed, the cloud offers both flexible and scalable solutions, helping schools to close technology gaps at manageable cost. But integrating cloud-based platforms or tools is a complicated process, one that requires careful review of both the needs of your school and the capabilities of your vendors.

Your school will need to align any cloud-based services with its particular needs, budget requirements, and goals. When developing a strategy to achieve this, there are key considerations that school administrators and IT professionals will need to keep in mind.

In general, schools will need to decide how much will be served by the cloud (it could serve a single application or an entire IT infrastructure), consider types of software, choose an interoperability standard, resolve migration issues, and create a clear plan for managing these tools effectively.

Which Cloud Services, and to What Degree?

Applications — At the most basic level, you should plan to integrate cloud-based learning or administrative applications into your existing IT network. These applications are accessible online and their data stored in cloud vendors’ servers, which means that no reconfiguration of existing physical IT hardware is required if your school has sufficient internet bandwidth. They’re an easy way to get your footing in cloud without committing a large portion of resources or employee effort (many apps are low-cost or free and can be deployed instantly).

Examples include document-sharing and collaboration tools like Google Apps for Education, which also hosts email and business applications, as well as learning tools like Clever, Verso, and Pear Deck. Explore multiple options to determine which applications meet your specific needs, bearing in mind that apps and their data should be interoperable with other systems and applications in your tech stack.

Integrating legacy software with cloud-based products can be a challenge, and it’s often easier to migrate wholesale to the Application Cloud. The same is true of legacy IT systems, which require the use of middleware or the migration of your legacy systems into the cloud.

Infrastructure — You may also decide to rehost some or all of your onsite IT functions in the cloud. Generally, schools have three basic cloud hosting options (though others exist):

• Private Cloud: Your school hosts a virtual cloud on your existing IT servers. This makes it possible to deploy software instantaneously to every digital device on your network, but requires additional capital investment to grow your IT infrastructure.
• Public Cloud: Your entire IT infrastructure is hosted on the servers of a cloud vendor, such as Amazon’s AWS or a low-cost shared data center (ITCs, ISDs, BOSEs). While many schools see this as “losing control” of their systems, the public cloud enables flexibility and scalability, as cloud services can be added or removed instantaneously. It also allows you to host all of your applications in the cloud, eliminating or greatly reducing interoperability issues.
• Hybrid Cloud: This is a mixture of both public and private cloud, allowing you to run some critical systems on-site (if you have security concerns, for example), while exporting your applications to a public cloud vendor.

While many schools are tempted to take a piecemeal approach to the cloud, opting for private or hybrid systems, embracing a full cloud solution offers distinct advantages. For one, you will longer need to maintain onsite data centers, removing the majority of capital costs from your IT equation. Instead, IT services switch to a flexible, pay-as-you go billing model, which also frees up IT resources to resolve other pressing issues.

In the same vein, your cloud services can grow in-step with your school, removing the risk of purchasing too much or not enough IT hardware. All told, a public option improves reliability, reduces costs, enables scalability, and aids interoperability.

Choosing an Interoperability Standard

Regardless of your path to the cloud, you should select an interoperability standard that will enable the easy sharing of information between software, systems, and people. These are industry-approved specifications that aim to standardize how data is transmitted between competing vendors and software.

In the education sector, two standards are most common: the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) and the IMS Global. Enforcing a standard across applications doesn’t guarantee interoperability, as schools run massively complex systems that communicate with many other entities. However, it’s always better to aim for a common integration standard and resolve any errors than be left with many disparate systems that are fundamentally incapable of “talking” to one another.

Using Middleware for Migration Issues

Middleware is a form of software that can also solve interoperability and migration issues, creating a bridge between two formerly incompatible programs or systems. It can also serve as a common hub that connects data streams from multiple programs, such as student, curricular, financial, and HR, to your central administrative platform, which might be a cloud-based application. Due to the complexity of most school IT infrastructures, you may require a variety of middleware tools.

In any case, it’s important to note that seamlessly migrating a quarter-century’s worth of IT development and implementation to the cloud is a considerable challenge. Equally important as technical considerations are the many bureaucratic go-aheads and approval processes schools must go through to get reform projects off the ground.

To navigate this complexities of both tasks, schools should partner with consultants who have experience in both cloud-based technology and K-12 education. Implementing cloud-based tools is worth both the financial cost and technical effort, but requires careful consideration of your school’s unique challenges and a discerning approach to the process of developing a solution.