Make the switch to a cloud-native model
When trying to finance another upgrade to its network operations center, Rick Roberts, executive director of educational technology services at Grossmont Union High School in California, turned his attention to the cloud.
“I had closely followed the evolution of cloud-native versus full-cloud solutions, and it seemed like it might be worth investigating,” Roberts recalls. Previously, his district team had always underestimated the cost of network upgrades. When it came time for additional updates, he decided to ask the HPE team, the longtime vendor in the area, about moving to HPE Greenlake.
“Everything is driven by the outcome we want, and the outcome we want is the best technology interaction between teachers and students in the classroom,” he says. “Everything has to work all the time, and it has to be safe all the time.”
Related: K-12 schools are betting that cloud providers can better secure their data.
By using Greenlake for compute and storage, his IT team is now better equipped to manage the network, rather than spending its time on “the day-to-day details of managing servers,” Roberts says.
“We have much more control over the quality of service at each school site,” he says. “Staff can be redirected to work activities that are more aligned while ensuring that connection to the classroom is always there.”
Back up K-12 data in the cloud to avoid disasters
An important element of maintaining online learning connection is having a robust backup and recovery strategy for lost data in the event of a cyberattack or disaster. Kevin Gavin, chief marketing officer at Backblaze, notes that K-12 was initially slow to adopt cloud-based backup solutions, but there has been a significant increase in the number of schools using the technology.
“We're seeing a huge shift in their mindset, their acceptance of the problem, and their realization that solving the problem isn't that hard if you get the right suppliers,” says Gavin.
K-12 IT leaders are also gaining a better understanding of the type of data they can or should backup, adds Carrie Rivas, senior product marketing manager at Backblaze. “Now, there's more focus on backing up Microsoft 365 data and Google Workspace data,” she says. “They realize that anywhere they have data — and there's a lot of data spread across all of these systems — it has to be supported by an alternative method.”
