Is $0.00 too high a cost???
Today, I took part in a webinar on Microsoft Live@EDU and their new Exchange Online services for school districts and I was blown away. I was given a preview to a system that changes how we manage information in our districts. The squeaky wheel lost to a cloud today.
If anything – watch their interactive website which includes animated films designed by students. Link is embedded or find here: http://my.liveatedu.com/
Here is what Microsoft says they will provide FOR EACH USER:
25GB of space on SkyDrive (their own individual home folder)
5GB of space in email
Ability to send 20MB per message
Instant messenger (which can be open for staff and not students)
Microsoft Sharepoint services – collaborative documents shared online
A website that includes blogging, calendars, document sharing, etc.
Microsoft Office Live access (Word, Power Point, Excel) online (no installers)
Microsoft Live Search
In other words, a teacher could upload their files to this system and then open rights up to students to view/edit. Teacher and administrators could create folders to share documents and files. The shared folders on our file server migrate up to this system and then we assign rights to the specific folders.
Microsoft Office Live is the web version of Office – Word, Power Point, Excel. Students and staff would have WEB access to these tools without having to install on their own computers.
Total cost for this: $0.00 for hosting. No advertisements on ANY student access service but staff may have Microsoft advertisements (only in top banner of screen). The advertisements aren’t commercials but a banner about a particular Microsoft service.
Positives:
Hosted off-site (no need for a second NOC….or a first NOC for that matter).
Free – and that is free forever (no fee later)
Web access means all materials are online all the time. No second upload for teachers wanting to post documents on their websites. They simply assign rights to their documents in their folders to who they want to view or edit the docs.
Microsoft availability online means kids and staff access Microsoft Office on any computer with Internet connectivity. Same version for everyone.
Built-in Spam and Virus scanner
Leave-ability: Graduates from district take email and info with them. Account goes from district address to @hotmail.com if they want it. All documents and files go with them and out of our control and management
Lots of space gives 30GB of space per user but may be up to 50GB once we get into the Office/Web apps
Private and secure
Collaborative work environments online
Instant Chat
Student websites – Students could make portfolios for classes and be able to share them with future employers/colleges.
Teacher websites – Teachers can generate websites with blogging, calendars, documents, document sharing, etc.
Syncs with our current Active Directory and setup (all current and archived emails with Folders migrate over)
Mobile phone access is built-in via the web
Low maintenance
Low migration issues
Offers ShareView which includes ability to link 15 users for screencasting
Negatives:
Hosted off-site so if the site is down or Internet is down, we are down.
Advertising on some areas (but it is for Microsoft products only)
25GB of space gives freedom to put music, games, etc. in the system. It will be hard to monitor it but we will look into that and how our network access control can help.
Microsoft – most viruses and hacks are targeted at them but in this day and age, we are all targets
Some migration issues. I think if we are to do this, we pay for the advanced migration tools and maybe hire an engineer to come help us migrate it all over. This could be our only cost.
My district uses Active Directory and Microsoft for everything so the migration will be simplified. The presenter in the webinar shared how universities migrate over 30,000 users in a week. We have 710 staff and have not opened up student accounts beyond the high school.
All this said, does the cloud beat the wheel? Do we migrate completely online? This changes cost dramatically but then the money for our own hosting goes to bandwidth. We open the pipeline!
I want to know from others out there who are experiencing this what their thoughts are. Districts, universities, businesses going Web 2.0 cloud – what do you think? Is it worth $0.00 for this??
April 8th, 2009 at 8:33 am
ok — proved I was person by typing human587….lol
I like the idea as a low cost low infrastructure solution…..but the biggest questions I have always had remain –
1. How do we handle archiving for staff email? extra service fee. Can I globally search all those accounts for legal requests or PIAs?
2. If students have accounts, can we control who can email them and who they can email?
3. Once migrated, do those accounts have separate credentials from our local AD?
Did MS say if we could choose just parts – like we want to keep email local, but move staff to use their inline SharePoint site?
Great post!
Thanks Joel
April 8th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Wow…I’m blown away, but the skeptic in me keeps asking “what’s the catch?”
The biggest problems for our district would be the email piece (because we’re not using outlook), having Internet available 24/7, and the bandwidth issue, which we’re already fighting.
It definitely sounds like something to look into though. I’m curious to see how ya’ll go forward, and what kinds of challenges/successes you have with it.
April 8th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
I’m the IT Director at Coos Bay Public Schools in Oregon. We’re possibly one of the first K12’s in the US to deploy this to our students. We did a pilot in the Spring of 2008, and then provisioned about 2500 accounts to our newly created domain cbd9.net
It’s been, I beleive, an excellent choice for us, with nearly no cost when compared to an in house solution.
Mail can be restricted to your own domain if you wish. We are configured to block all incoming and outgoing except for .edu domains and our own.
I would highly recommend this service. See also the case study.
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000003627
April 17th, 2009 at 8:09 am
It seems like a matter of trust to me. All of the cloud computing is this way. Do you trust Microsoft to control your data? Will they misuse the power that it gives them? The same can be said for Google. Trust.
Janice