Cloud computing in education

Savings, flexibility, and choice for IT

A Microsoft U.S. Education white paper

April 2010

www.microsoft.com/educloud
 2

can deliver these sophisticated demand

communications environments, access to
Contents including the desktop applications critical
that employers use today, will be
Introduction................................................................................................................................................................................ information
Getting cloud confident......................................................................................................................................................... helping their students find better using any
Which cloud is right for you?............................................................................................................................................... jobs and greater opportunities device from
Anytime, anywhere apps: SaaS............................................................................................................................................ in the future. anywhere.
SaaS planning tips....................................................................................................................................................................
Cloud computing can help Both public
Platforms in the cloud: PaaS.................................................................................................................................................
PaaS planning tips................................................................................................................................................................. provide those solutions. It’s a and private
network of computing resources institutions
Data centers on demand: IaaS..........................................................................................................................................
IaaS planning tips.................................................................................................................................................................. —located just about anywhere— can use the
that can be shared. They bring to cloud to
Security in the cloud.............................................................................................................................................................
Your own private cloud........................................................................................................................................................ education a range of options not deliver
found in traditional IT models. In better
Stepping into the clouds.....................................................................................................................................................
Looking ahead to a world of IT choices........................................................................................................................ fact, the integration of software services,
and assets you own with software even as they
Cloud technology from Microsoft...................................................................................................................................
Platform and infrastructure services from Microsoft................................................................................................ and services in the cloud provides work with
you with new choices for fewer
Endnotes....................................................................................................................................................................................
balancing system management, resources. By
cost, and security while helping to sharing IT
improve services. services in
the cloud,
What’s in the cloud? Much of your
The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to
Introduction At the same time,
changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after what’s on your desktop or in your education
the date of publication.
education institutions data center right now. For institution
The
This whiteclassroom is changing.
paper is for informational FromMAKES
purposes only. MICROSOFT when the school
NO WARRANTIES, bell OR STATUTORY,
EXPRESS, IMPLIED, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT.example, e-mail in the cloud is, in
are under increasing can
rings to study sessions that last well into the night,
Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. Without limiting the rights under copyright, pressure may be reproduced, stored inmany
to deliver
no part of this document or cases, free for schools and outsource
students
permission are demanding more technology services universities that need to upgrade
introduced into a retrieval system; transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise); or used for any purpose, without the express
written of Microsoft Corporation. more for less, and they noncore
from their schools. It’s important not only to keep need to find ways to legacy systems and expand services and
Microsoft may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in this document. Except as expressly provided in any
written license agreement from Microsoft, the furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents,offer rich, or other intellectual property.services. The cloud helps ensure
affordable
pace with their evolving needs, but also to prepare trademarks, copyrights,
better
©them for Corporation.
2010 Microsoft the demands ofMicrosoft,
All rights reserved. the workplace tomorrow.
Active Directory, Forefront, services
Hotmail, Hyper-V, Microsoft Dynamics, and
SharePoint, tools.
SkyDrive,
that students, teachers, faculty,
SQL Azure, Visual Studio, Windows concentrate
Those educators who
Azure, Windows Live, and Windows Server are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. parents, and staff have on- on offering
 3

students, teachers, faculty, and staff the essential tools to "We've entered a makes them available to you on
Getting
help them succeed. new era of science demand—that is, when you need them.
—one based on Service capacity is controlled in the
cloud
As you plan your long-term, data center strategy, your data-driven cloud and is dynamic and elastic: confident
exploration—and
institution can benefit from opportunities Computing resources are allocated and
in the cloud.
each new deallocated as demand changes. Why all the
generation of hype
computing Cloud compliance
technology, such as around
Cloud services comply with relevant
cloud computing, statutes, such as the Health Insurance cloud
creates Portability and Accountability Act of computing?
unprecedented 1996 (HIPAA), the Family Educational Three
opportunities Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), and the
for discovery." words:
Schools Interoperability Framework
Jeannette M. Wing (SIF). cheaper,
Assistant Director faster,
for the Computer
greener.
& Information
Science & Without
Engineering any
Directorate, infrastructu
National Science
re
Foundation
investment
February 2010 s, you can
http://www.nsf.gov/
get
news/news_summ.js
p?cntn_id=116336 powerful
software
with lower
Cloud terminology or no up-
Services include software front costs
and hardware, from
and fewer
e-mail to entire IT
platforms, which are manageme
hosted in the cloud. This nt
means that someone else headaches

Introduction Cloud Confident Your Cloud SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Security First Steps Looking Ahead Cloud Technology from Microsoft
 4

in the classroom on campus and beyond. The free or heavy infrastructure School bytes Microsoft
investments—all while offers
pay-as-you-go benefits are so compelling that the For the Stillman School of Business
at Seton Hall, cloud computing Microsoft
federal budget submitted to Congress in February helping to lower your
offers choice. Professors there Live@edu
2010 commits to the use of cloud computing total cost of ownership. , a free
now have the ability to text with
The trick is to find the option
technologies and to a reduction in the number and students, their preferred method
right balance of on- of communication. designed
cost of federal data centers.
premise and cloud specificall
services for your y for
The hype surrounding cloud computing is recent, but the
education
services in the cloud are not particularly new. Windows Live education institution. Defining the cloud
institutio
Hotmail, one of the most popular messaging services Clouds in nature may appear loosely ns (see
worldwide, launched in 1996 and now serves 400 million defined, but at the National Institute of page 7).
accounts. People have been meeting in the cloud for at Standards and Technology (NIST),
cloud computing means the following:
least 10 years using hosted conference services, such as
Microsoft Office Live Meeting, which hosts 5 billion  On-demand service. You can get
what you need when you need it.
conference minutes a year.
 Broad network access. The cloud
What’s new are the growing number of services and brings network-based access to,
alternative payment models that promise appealing cost and management of, software and
savings, security, and flexibility. Cloud options range from services—meaning access is
anywhere, anytime.
everyday services, such as e-mail, calendaring, and
collaboration tools that members of your education  Resource pooling. A large pool of
community can use to collaborate online, to infrastructure users shares location-independent
resources and costs in an
services that free IT operations from mundane tasks and
environmentally sustainable way.
help you build on the investments you already have in
place. System administrators can bring new services and  Flexible resource allocation. As
demands fluctuate, cloud services
computing capacity online quickly while managing costs as
can scale rapidly. You don’t have
operational expenses. By allowing IT to respond quickly to
to worry about bringing new
changes, cloud computing helps administrators manage servers online or reallocating
risks, peak demand, and long-term planning needs. resources.

With cloud computing as part of your IT strategy, you can  Measured service. Most cloud
usage is metered, often per user
increase your data capacity without compromising security
or per hour. With those services,
or requiring your school, college, or university to make you pay for what you use.
 5

Which cloud is right for you? Outsourcing some Cloud reality check carbon
capabilities to the emissions
With cloud computing comes hype.
The choice to move to the cloud is not an all-or- cloud makes the most What can you expect?
from data
centers
nothing proposition. With different types of cloud of what’s on-site by  “It’s cheaper.” The truth is, you will
offerings, you have flexible options about which freeing time, budget, need to balance the up-front quadrupl
services to obtain in the cloud and which to keep on- and people. For savings with ongoing subscription e by
site. Your priorities and security requirements example, with SaaS, costs to determine actual savings. 2020.
you can add services, The free service from Microsoft Consolida
determine the level of cloud capabilities to explore. and pay-as-you-go approaches let ting and
like e-mail, affordably.
you balance your IT budget with sharing
If you look closely at the cloud, you'll see three distinct sets With PaaS, you can operational expense spending resources
of offerings: deliver services broadly instead of capital expenses. So can curb
 Software as a Service (SaaS): The applications, such as without having to you can expect to reduce costs the waste
e-mail, people use everyday. manage the associated with server hardware, of data
 Platform as a Service (PaaS): The operating infrastructure. With support and deployment, and center
power consumption. sprawl
environment in which applications run. IaaS, you get
and
 Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): The on-demand data pay-as-you-go data  “It’s faster.” Data-intensive
computing in the cloud can be six reduce
centers. center capacity for greenhou
times faster than in isolated data
adding CPUs, storage, se gas
centers. You can deploy
networking, or Web applications more quickly, too, emissions
hosting. compared to traditional means. .
And it’s certainly fast to procure So, yes, the
on-demand services. cloud
 “It’s greener.” In 2006, the truly has
Department of Energy estimated a green
that U.S. data centers consumed lining.
about 1.5 percent of all U.S.
electricity use, and current
projections show worldwide

Figure 1. The three general types of cloud services: SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS

Introduction Cloud Confident Your Cloud SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Security First Steps Looking Ahead Cloud Technology from Microsoft
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Anytime, anywhere apps: SaaS Who uses SaaS in Windows Live@edu (cobranded as
Penn Live), 40 percent
education?
The cloud hosts the applications you use every day for of students switched in four
 Instead of an months. Students were provided
productivity, contact management, payment expensive IT upgrade, with approximately 66 times more
processing, and more. In the current and future Seton Hall University storage space, increased reliability,
economy, SaaS makes sense. It can lower expenses implemented and an improved interface as
associated with software acquisitions in the near term. Microsoft Live@edu compared to
hosted collaboration their previous service
Longer term, it helps organizations with limited IT services, including
resources to deploy and maintain needed software in Windows Live
a timely manner while, at the same time, reducing SkyDrive online
storage. Now
energy consumption and expense.
students have the
tools to be successful
A growing number of academic institutions are turning to
on campus and in the
SaaS for their desktop applications. For example, Hinds
workforce.
Community College uses an e-mail solution hosted in the
cloud. Students now have the free collaboration tools they  Students at Eastern
Washington
want, people on campus have the tools they need to work
University chose the
together, and administrators are finding it easier and more Windows Live Hotmail
cost-effective to manage. Web-based e-mail
service, and the ability
to choose their own
user names and share
calendars when
arranging meetings.
By retiring the
previous service, the
university estimates it
will save U.S.$70,000
over three years.
 When the University
of Pennsylvania
College of Arts and
Sciences offered
the option of using

Introduction Cloud Confident Your Cloud SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Security First Steps Looking Ahead Cloud Technology from Microsoft
 7

SaaS for education: Microsoft Live@edu  University of implementation supports the

Cincinnati has an school’s green initiatives
The workplace is changing, and the desktop applications extensive 55,000 by saving space and energy costs.
Live@edu deployment, The university anticipates saving
that employers use today will evolve to desktop
including user identity about $30,000 a year by not
applications combined with Web services tomorrow. management and having to hire additional IT staff to
Educators preparing tomorrow’s workforce want to partner password support.
with companies that can give them affordable access to synchronization with
those tools today. ILM, a single sign-on
portal, and more.
Students can launch any
Microsoft Live@edu is a program that provides students,
of the Live@edu
staff, faculty, and alumni long-term, primary e-mail applications directly
addresses and other applications that they can use to from their Blackboard
collaborate and communicate online—all at no cost to home page and
education institutions. Students will be using Microsoft synchronize with their
class schedules.
products similar to those used in many workplaces that
help to prepare them for jobs after college.  The Ohio University is
almost done activating
more than 140,000
Live@edu accounts for
current students and
alumni. While the school
is looking to reduce
costs and improve
communications with
alumni, students cite the
modern Web interface,
increased mailbox
capacity, and powerful
search capabilities as
top features.
 Belmont University is
using Microsoft
Exchange Online to
serve approximately
1,400 faculty and staff
e-mail accounts. The
Exchange Online

Introduction Cloud Confident Your Cloud SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Security First Steps Looking Ahead Cloud Technology from Microsoft
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Considering SaaS
SaaS planning tips Cloudsourcing
Consider SaaS for the following
 Look for the ability to customize or configure the
checklist education needs:
application for your environment. Gartner uses the term  E-mail, calendar, and instant
“cloudsourcing” to refer to
Not all SaaS providers allow configuration. messaging
the way that organizations
 Make sure an SaaS solution has all the features you will provision services.  Desktop productivity, such as
want. Some hosted versions are not identical to their Whether you want document creation and sharing
desktop counterparts. productivity software  Collaboration and presence
 Can you share? The City University of New York chose offered as a hosted service
or a cloud-based  Payment processing
Microsoft Live@edu, a hosted communication and
messaging infrastructure,  Identity and relationship
collaboration solution that can reliably and securely you must cloudsource management
host e-mail accounts across all 23 colleges. carefully.
 Don’t focus solely on costs—look for ways to improve  Know your security
efficiencies. For example, can on-demand resources and compliance Platforms in the cloud: needed for
free your time to offer more critical services to needs. Can the those
provider meet them? PaaS
students or staff, reduce time spent on more services.
Transparency,
mundane IT chores, or get features into use more The scalable architecture of the
compliance controls,
quickly? cloud is transforming how PaaS is the
certifications, and
 Realize that applications have been running in the auditability are some academic institutions think operating
cloud for years, but a variety of approaches exist. of the key criteria to about how they serve their environment
Look for service-oriented architectures (SOA), Web evaluate. of the cloud
students, teachers, faculty, and
services standards, and Web application frameworks  Compare vendor with the
staff. Size—of your service,
—they’re easier to integrate. offerings—not just for tools you
budget, or staff—does not limit need on
features and costs but
 Make sure you own your data. Your service IT when the platform for
agreement with a provider should explicitly specify
also for uptime, demand to
security, and custom services is as readily create and
that the client owns the data—without a time limit. flexibility. available and broadly host online
You don’t want to get locked in if you need to switch
providers.
 Ask whether service deployable as the Web. Cloud services,
levels are negotiable. platforms free you to focus on software,
And what happens if
the services you can offer Web sites,
the vendor falls short
—are there without worrying about or and mobile
meaningful penalties? managing the infrastructure applications.

Introduction Cloud Confident Your Cloud SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Security First Steps Looking Ahead Cloud Technology from Microsoft
 9

With PaaS, you can concentrate on delivering applications The future of PaaS in Science
PaaS
rather than on the underlying infrastructure, which a University of California, Berkeley
education planning
service provider maintains and updates in its data centers. "We are working with
You can also use PaaS to create multi-tenant applications Microsoft to provide the
tips
—that is, services accessed by many users simultaneously. academic community a  Implem
novel cloud computing ent a
With PaaS, you can develop new applications or services in service with which to
secure,
the cloud that do not depend on a specific platform to run, experiment and explore,
with the grander goal of develo
and you can make them widely available to users through
advancing the frontiers of pment-
the Internet.
science and engineering as life
PaaS delivers cloud-based application development tools
we tackle societal grand cycle
in addition to services for testing, deploying, collaborating challenges." method
on, hosting, and maintaining applications. The accessibility
Jeannette M. Wing, ology
of PaaS Assistant Director for the for
offerings enables any programmer to create enterprise- Computer & Information
your
scale systems that integrate with other Science & Engineering
Directorate, National
applica
Web services and databases—an aspect of cloud
Science Foundation tions
computing that fosters additional opportunities
that are
for education IT and allows bigger thinking.
hosted
“With cloud computing
The open architecture of PaaS can support integration with in the
there’s no reason to wait. It
legacy applications and interoperability with on-site doesn’t cost us any more
cloud,
systems—important considerations because education to use a thousand and
operates in a mixed IT world. Interoperability gives you the computers for an hour evaluat
flexibility to take advantage of cloud benefits while than it does
to use one computer for a
retaining data and applications on-site as needed.
thousand hours. So we get
. the answers tomorrow at
no extra cost rather than
Introduction Cloud Confident Your Cloud SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Security waiting for the answers for
six months.”
David Patterson
Professor of Computer
 10

e the cloud provider’s compliance against a similar allow you to take Considering PaaS Data
process. your application Consider PaaS for the following centers
 Plan to scale your service. The multi-tenant and put it on education needs:
architecture of PaaS offerings often comes with another platform. on
 Coordinating collaborative
concurrency management, scalability, failover, and software development projects demand:
that involve multiple departments
security so that you can think big when testing and Introduction Cloud Confident Your Cloud IaaS
developing software.  Developing applications that can
be shared by many users How many
 Don’t get overwhelmed by the proliferation of
protocols and Web services available to PaaS simultaneously data
developers. But do consider how you can integrate  Creating social networks or centers
Web services and databases to create new services. communities according to grade, does it take
school, or area of study to run a
 Look for providers that help you develop more
custom Web apps faster. For example, some PaaS  Porting on-premise, line-of- K−12 or
environments help geographically dispersed teams business applications to the cloud higher
collaborate and share code or include services for  Deploying Web services quickly education
creating data models and policies visually.  Creating mashups of data to meet institution?
 Follow the example of other institutions that are accountability and assessment Now that
integrating Web services and open datasets within needs
the cloud
PaaS environments. For example, create mashups with offers
datasets in the cloud, such as those available from the storage,
Microsoft Open Government Data Initiative (OGDI), a
networks,
set of software assets designed to help bring useful
and servers
data to the public.
as a service,
 Remember that you can lease capacity as needed and
technology
use PaaS to test and debug high-memory or
compute-intensive features in the cloud whether or is no longer
not you deploy your services bound by
in the cloud. the
 Compare how well vendor tools enable portability traditional
across clouds. Do they support application on-site IT
interactions and provide resources and policies for department
service interoperability? Some providers may not . On-
 11

demand data centers put virtually unlimited Virtual infrastructures cloud services. Then ask prospective
IaaS
service providers whether they can
computing power into the hands of even the smallest Providers of cloud planning
meet your needs for transparency,
education institution. computing services use
virtualization to provide
compliance controls, certifications, and tips
auditability.
On-demand data centers—also known as IaaS—provide the elasticity so often cited
 Weigh
compute power, memory, and storage, typically priced per as a benefit. Virtualization
means to create virtual
the
hour according to resource consumption. Some call IaaS impact
machines out of physical
bare metal on demand. You pay for only what you use, and servers, that is, multiple to your
the service provides all the capacity you need, but you’re operating environments IT
responsible for monitoring, managing, and patching your within one physical organiz
on-demand infrastructure. One big advantage of IaaS is environment. That way,
ation
that it offers a cloud-based data center without requiring you can squeeze the
before
maximum computing
you to install new equipment or to wait for the hardware adoptin
capacity out of your
procurement process. This means you can get IT resources g IaaS
existing resources.
at your school, college, or university that otherwise might Virtualization technology is becaus
not be available. useful for any IT group e you
interested in cost-effective are still
With IaaS, savings come from hardware and infrastructure data consolidation apart
respons
costs but not necessarily from staffing because you are still from cloud computing. Just
ible for
responsible for system management, patch management, be aware that virtual
machines need to be softwar
failover and backup, redundancy, and other system
managed and maintained, e
management tasks. Depending on the service, an IaaS
whether they reside on a patches
provider typically handles load balancing, monitoring, and service provider’s ,
scaling automatically, and you manage your infrastructure or in your
mainte
cloud deployments. own data center.
nance,
On-demand and
Introduction Cloud Confident Your Cloud SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Security
compliance upgrad
Compare IaaS offerings es.
carefully. You should have Monito
a well-functioning ring
compliance program for
and
identities, data, and
managi
devices before adopting
 12

ng applications in a provider’s data center, in addition Considering IaaS Security in the cloud and
to those you host yourself, can become a burden to Consider IaaS for the regulatory
staff. following education needs:
Education institutions are compliance
 Create a strong internal team to manage your security  Hosting community
entrusted with confidential needs, but
and compliance requirements together with a chosen and other public- information and private data. you know
cloud provider. facing Web sites. Cloud computing may seem your unique
 Make sure you have a thorough understanding of  Storing—especially risky because you cannot needs of
how your current system works before you outsource public data. The secure its perimeter—where education IT
any of it to the cloud. You need to know what you’re public cloud might are a cloud’s boundaries? In best. You
even be a safer place must look
getting. addition, these institutions
to store data than carefully at
 Look for service providers who can meet your your own data center, must comply with regulatory
how well
redundancy needs for connectivity or storage according to a team statutes, such FERPA and
of engineers and cloud
so that you never lose needed services. HIPAA, and should support
computer scientists at providers
 Negotiate service-level agreements (SLAs) to ensure education standards, such as
the University of protect key
you get the level of security and identity management California.i However, SIF. functions
required by your organization. data classification is a and sensitive
 Understand that on demand is not all or nothing, and key requirement for NIST likens the adoption of cloud
data.
take advantage of pay-per-use pricing in the near evaluating risk and computing to wireless technology.
making informed Institutions learned how to
term for some of the applications you run in a data
decisions about the protect their wireless data as they
center. Use existing, dedicated capacity for baseline
use of cloud Introduction Cloud Confiden
resources while you assess the impact on your IT staff. moved forward—and they will do
computing.
 Look at the access methods for an IaaS offering, and the same with cloud computing.ii
 Testing large-scale In building its solution, Aga Khan
see if existing standards are used. Common protocols applications in a
include XML (Extensible Markup Language), REST University in Pakistan found that
discrete environment
(Representative before deploying cloud computing helped
State Transfer), SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), publicly. strengthen security and improve
and FTP (File Transfer Protocol). protection against viruses,
resulting in 66 percent reduction
 Plan an exit strategy. If you choose to change
in calls to the IT department.
providers, make sure you know how to get
applications from the cloud. The bottom line? Education
Introduction Cloud Confident Your Cloud SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Security
institutions vary in their security
 13

Security checklist Your own private hosting even encrypted data Who’s in
in a public cloud. your cloud?
 Integration. Look for integration points with security and cloud
identity management technologies you already have, such as  An application requires In the cloud,
Active Directory, and controls for role-based access and entity- Institutions with greater reliability or speed you share
level applications. sensitive information than the Internet. computing
 Privacy. Make sure a cloud service and workloads would power with
 You want control over your
includes data encryption, effective data anonymization, and others. The
probably never want assets, including physical
right model
mobile location privacy.
all of their data in a possession of the hardware for you is the
 Access. When you place your resources in a shared cloud your
public cloud. Private one that meets
infrastructure, the provider must have a means of preventing data resides on. A private your data
inadvertent access. What is the provider’s policy if protected clouds offer the
cloud offers one solution if classification,
data is released accidentally? scalability and shared security,
you still want to take
 Jurisdiction. The location of a cloud provider’s operations can resources of cloud privacy, and
advantage of
affect the privacy laws that apply to the data it hosts. Does your computing on your education IT
cloud benefits. requirements.
data need to reside within your legal jurisdiction? terms—and on your
turf. To achieve true Public cloud
A cloud
cloud scalability in a
infrastructure
private cloud, you shared by the
must forecast general public
demand to support or industry,
typically
the requisite degree
owned and
of excess capacity managed by
and invest an
accordingly. organization
that sells
cloud services.
When should you
Community
avoid the cloud? cloud
In the following cases: A cloud
infrastructure
 A regulatory or shared
security issue exclusively by
certain groups
prevents you from

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 14

and managed by the group or a third party. It can be hosted on or

Stepping into the existing applications could strategi
off premise. take advantage of the cloud. es, such
clouds
Private cloud  Evaluate a Web service or as
Cloud resources confined inside a firewall with private control over As popular, cloud hosted application in a test PaaS,
the cloud infrastructure. Some private enterprises run their data pay off
computing services or development
centers as a private cloud.
outperform internal environment. Did the service over
Hybrid cloud
infrastructure—with save you time or money? time, so
An approach that uses a public cloud for some services, such as factor
99.9 percent uptime Use any savings to justify
school announcements, but uses a private data center for others,
future endeavors. in how
such as storage of sensitive data that must comply with federal or better in many
mandates.
long it
cases—the road to Step 2: Budget for the cloud might
the cloud looks good. take to
Between the  Consider how the cloud
recoup
flexibility of the cloud gives you a predictable
your
budget and plan for IT
and the power of on- investm
resources. Offloading some
premise software, ent,
IT functions to the cloud can
your education and set
free up funds to further
institution can map a expecta
develop services for
cloud strategy that tions
students, teachers, faculty,
works. accordi
staff, and parents.
ngly.
 Talk to peers and find ways
Step 1: Justify cloud
to share networks, Step 3:
services
computers, and even e-mail Integrate
 Start by services. Cloud hosting could cloud
discovering how help you share common services
much cloud services, such as citywide
school systems or state  Look
computing is
community colleges, and for
already taking
even generate revenue from ways to
place in your
your shared services. integrat
education
e on-
institution, and  Know when to make your
premis
consider how your move. Some cloud
 15

e applications and databases with cloud technologies Storm clouds
to offer more or faster services. But make sure your Expect the cloud not only
data is secured in transit, not just at the ends. to drive technology
change, but also to change
 Think big—especially if you’re a small education
institution. Cloud services are massively scalable. Who processes, people, and
management procedures.
else might benefit? Keep other departments or
All these factors need to be
districts in the loop. aligned as you plan any
cloud implementation.
And keep an eye on the
press as you go forward.
The public perception of
risk may
raise concerns with your
stakeholders.
Looking ahead to a a platform
world of IT choices that gives
The cloud is a bridge from the you the
desktop to a world of devices, power of
from the average on-campus choice to
school day to remote services deploy
anywhere and anytime. As services in
much excitement as there is the cloud or
in cloud computing, it is just
through
one piece of a technology
on-premise
landscape that spans from the
on-premise data center to the servers—or
cloud and reaches people to combine
through the computer, Web, them in any
and phone. way that
works best
At Microsoft, we see academic
for your
institutions using a blend of
organization
hosted and on-premise
products and solutions that are
and
deeply integrated. Today, your
constituents.
application can run solely
on premise, it might store data or
code in the cloud, or it can make
use of other cloud
infrastructure services. That’s why
our approach to cloud computing
for education relies on

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Cloud benefits for education Cloud
How can the cloud help you transform education? Consider the technology from
following:
Microsoft
 Flexible services. Drive innovation with data services in the
cloud that students, teachers, faculty, and staff can reuse. Offer Education IT is not
your own data mashups on a portal.
one size fits all—and
 Infrastructure. Get all the IT resources you need, only when
neither is the cloud.
you need them, managed securely and predictably. And pay for
That’s why our
only what you use. Any budget-constrained institution has to
approach to cloud
like that.
computing is created
 Applications and content. Rather than waiting in the software
procurement line, get hosted software, datasets, and services to provide you with
so fast you’ll have plenty of time to work on your mission. choices and
flexibility. Education
 Policies and regulations. Proceed carefully, but note how
cloud computing can help you meet your institution’s IT will continue to run
compliance requirements.
applications within its
 Creative IT. Free your IT department from a keep-the-lights-on own environment
approach to foster some creative problem solving that can help
while adding new
teachers better engage their students.
applications and
services that run in
the cloud. Our focus
is on making
solutions for the real
world of hybrid IT
environments by
providing cost-
effective software
and services that
support your efforts
to foster learning,
create opportunities,
and address challenges facing workflo
education. And our extensive w.
community of partners is Micros
oft
available to work with you to
Office
deliver innovative solutions on
Comm
premise or in the cloud.
unicati
Software and services from ons
Online
Microsoft
provide
 Microsoft Live@edu provides s real-
students, staff, faculty, and time,
alumni long-term, primary e- person-
mail addresses and other to-
applications that they can person
use to collaborate and commu
communicate online—all at nicatio
no cost to your education
ns,
institution. throug
 Microsoft Business h text,
Productivity Online Suite voice,
(BPOS) delivers a suite of and
services, also available as video.
stand-alone software, for Micros
hosted communication and oft
collaboration. Microsoft
Exchange Online delivers
your e-mail with protection,
plus calendar and contacts.
Microsoft SharePoint Online
creates a highly secure,
central location for
collaboration, content, and

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Office Live Meeting delivers hosted Web Microsoft in the Microsoft guarantees 99.9 percent
Platform
conferencing. uptime at
cloud and
its data centers, which are outfitted to
 Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services offers online As one of the largest,
tools to help your organization protect itself from hosted-services providers
operate during power outages and infrastruc
after natural disasters. Microsoft
spam and malicious software, satisfy retention in the world, Microsoft replicates data from ture
offers a solid track record
requirements for e-discovery and compliance, encrypt its primary data centers to secondary services
as an online solution data centers for redundancy without
data to preserve confidentiality, and more. Microsoft
provider. Long established storing any data off-site. from
Forefront Online Protection for Exchange helps
in the cloud, Microsoft
protect e-mail from spam, viruses, phishing scams, Microsof
continues to invest heavily
and e-mail policy violations. —U.S.$9.5 billion per year t
 Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online streamlines —in research and
 Azure
customer relationship management, and delivers development to help drive
the technology further. Service
results through your browser and within your s
everyday productivity applications. Compliance
Platfor
Recognizing that data in
 Microsoft Office Web Apps let you access documents m
many forms is one of
from virtually anywhere and provide online access to education’s most prized support
your work and a core set of Microsoft Office assets, Microsoft has s
functionality over the Web. invested more than $2 applica
billion in new data centers tions,
around the world. These
data,
centers today meet or
exceed U.S. federal and
government and infrastr
international security body ucture
standards. Microsoft online in the
services and data centers cloud,
adhere to stringent HIPAA
giving
and SIF requirements. The
data centers are also SAS
you the
70 and ISO 27001 certified, flexibilit
and they are audited by y to run
independent, third-party applica
security organizations. tions—
Uptime or just

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store code or data—in the cloud, on premise, or with Manager 2008, Data with or without borders
a combination of both. Azure Services Platform is an along with partner
If your data needs to stay within the
on-demand operating environment for hosting, extensions, to
U.S. borders, Microsoft can guarantee it
managing, and creating application services in the plan, operate, and with multiple data centers across the
cloud, which makes it the choice of many Microsoft deliver the United States that provide reliability
partners who are using it to build their own public foundation for a and failover for education customers.
and private cloud services and data centers. private cloud. In addition, our data centers preserve
 Featuring Windows Azure for running Windows  System Center the chain of custody for documents.
applications and storing data in the cloud, Azure Online Desktop When moving documents between on-
premise and cloud services, documents
Services Platform also includes Microsoft SQL Azure Manager lets you
retain the format and fidelity needed to
Database, a cloud-based, relational database service easily secure, create a reasonable facsimile for
built on Microsoft SQL Server that offers highly update, monitor, investigations or Freedom of
available, scalable, multi-tenant database services. configure, and Information Act (FOIA) requests.
Software developers can use Windows Azure Tools for troubleshoot How green is our cloud?
Microsoft Visual Studio to create, configure, build, computers from a Microsoft data centers are designed to
debug, and run Web applications and services on single, Web-based reduce total energy consumption by
Windows Azure. Windows Azure platform AppFabric, console—without 25−40 percent compared to traditional
formerly known as .NET Services, makes it simpler for the overhead facilities.
them to connect cloud services and on-premise associated with Who’s who in our cloud?
applications. installing and Millions use Microsoft-hosted services,
maintaining an including Carleton University, City
 For more information, see our Windows Azure
University
platform white papers. on-premise
of New York, Florida International
 Microsoft Code-Named “Dallas” makes it easy to find, management
University, Indiana University, Purdue
purchase, and manage premium data subscriptions in infrastructure. University, Seton
the Windows Azure platform, and you can consume Hall University, and the National
the data from any platform, application, or business Science Foundation.

workflow. Calculate cloud cost savings

 Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Enterprise is a free, Get a customized estimate of the
potential
partner-extensible toolkit that provides a framework
cost savings your education institution
for creating virtualized IT infrastructures. IT teams can might achieve by building on the
use the toolkit with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Windows Azure platform. Try our Total
and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Cost of Ownership Calculator.

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Microsoft Description
resources

In the cloud Microsoft cloud services offer you the power of choice. You can run some applications on premise, use hosted services managed by Microsoft or our partners, or
use a flexible combination of both. Hosted solutions provide familiar features and experience in the cloud for users of Windows and Microsoft Office.

Microsoft You can participate in a community of developers and other professionals to influence the development of future solutions at the Microsoft Public Sector Idea
Public Sector Bank, which highlights on-demand solutions powered by Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Idea Bank

For Academic institutions operate in a mixed IT world that requires integration and interoperability among its departments and their IT environments. Microsoft offers
interoperabilit a multifaceted approach to achieving interoperability and is committed to solving real-world interoperability challenges with our customers through innovative
y products, community engagement, technology access, and support for technology standards.

About open Open source software is part of many data centers today, and Microsoft provides many resources for open source developers, including Port 25, an open source
source community, and CodePlex, project hosting for open source software.

About Education IT departments are challenged more than ever to meet competing resource demands in new ways. Virtualization can help agencies control costs,
infrastructure improve manageability, drive agility, and improve availability. Data center sustainability is another approach to lowering costs and reducing environmental impact.

To save energy Green IT solutions promote long-term sustainability and can offer significant savings through a combination of energy conservation, improved workflow, and
streamlined deployment.

Endnotes

Introduction Cloud Confident Your Cloud SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Security First Steps Looking Ahead Cloud Technology from Microsoft
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Armbrust, Michael, et al. “Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing” (Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2009-28), University
of California, Berkeley, 2009. http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2009/EECS-2009-28.html

ii
Beizer, Doug. “NIST creates cloud-computing team.” Federal Computer Week, February 25, 2009.
http://www.fcw.com/Articles/2009/02/25/NIST-cloud-computing.aspx