With so many companies making the switch to cloud-based services for their data usage, it should come as no surprise that many colleges and universities have followed suit. They deal with just as much information—if not more—than your average company, but how are they making the most of this technology? We put together this blog post to answer that very question by covering the numerous ways higher education utilizes the cloud in their current systems.
Modernizing General Operations
It might come as a shock to you that some colleges still use paper filing systems for all their important documents. Compare that to cloud storage, and you’ll see a night and day difference in how each school runs its general operations. Even if a university uses a localized digital filing system, it can’t compare to the speeds and reliability of a cloud-based system. When constantly dealing with forms for enrollment, housing, and financial aid, the cloud becomes necessary to keep up with increasing workloads.
Broadening the Reach of Their Services
With online classes becoming more of a normalized option for students, colleges and universities can expand their reach to those who can’t afford to move or live on campus. While online teaching is possible without the cloud, due to the increase in people opting to stay at home since the pandemic, internet traffic has increased significantly. Cloud services not only help with speeds, but with class sizes too. Thanks to cloud integration, massive open online courses (MOOCs) are bigger than ever.
Enhancing the Interconnectivity of Students and Professors
One of the most critical ways higher education utilizes the cloud is to improve the connections between students and professors. Whether on campus or across the country, steady and readily available forms of communication are required for everyone involved in coursework. The cloud makes conference calls, messaging, and document sharing easier than ever. Plus, accessibility wherever there’s an internet connection makes access to the features much more straightforward.
Improving the Quality of Higher Learning
If schools take the time to teach professors how to make the most of their cloud services, they can find ways to improve the quality of the classes they teach. Whether a student needs to access documents to study for an upcoming midterm exam, or a group needs access to data for a research project, the storage capabilities of the cloud make all of this more manageable.
If we’ve convinced you about what the cloud can do for your school and want to learn more about how you could implement these services yourself, you should check out our list of Azure infrastructure solutions. We can help you get in a good spot for your college’s cloud usage.