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Microsoft cloud computing gives better choice and flexibility to education IT departments. The platform and applications you use can be on premises, off premises, or a combination of both, depending on your academic organization’s needs.

Key benefits

The advantages that come with cloud computing can help you resolve some of the common challenges you might have while supporting your education institution.

• Cost. You choose a subscription or, in some cases, a pay-as-you-go plan—whichever works best with your organization’s business model.
• Flexibility. Scale your infrastructure to maximize investments. Cloud computing allows you to dynamically scale as demands fluctuate.
• Accessibility. Help make data and services publicly available without jeopardizing sensitive information.

Choices

When you use Microsoft cloud services, you choose whether you deploy on-premises, have the software hosted as a service, or use a combination of the two. This choice comes with the freedom to adjust or modify your infrastructure and deployment model as service demands change.

You choose how to best combine:

• Infrastructure as a Service. Get on-demand computing and storage to host, scale, and manage applications and services. Using Microsoft data centers means you can scale with ease and speed to meet the infrastructure needs of your entire organization or individual departments within it, globally or locally.
• Platform as a Service. The Windows Azure cloud platform as a service consists of an operating system, a fully relational database, message-based service bus, and a claims-based access controller providing security-enhanced connectivity and federated access for on-premise applications. As a family of on-demand services, the Windows Azure platform offers your organization a familiar development experience, on-demand scalability, and reduced time to market for your applications.
• Software as a Service. Microsoft hosts online services that provide your faculty, staff, and students with a consistent experience across multiple devices.
• Microsoft Live@edu provides students, staff, faculty, and alumni long-term, primary e-mail addresses and other applications that they can use to collaborate and communicate online—all at no cost to your education institution.
• Exchange Hosted Services offers online tools to help your organization protect itself from spam and malware, satisfy retention requirements for e-discovery and compliance, encrypt data to preserve confidentiality, and maintain access to e-mail during and after emergency situations.
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online provides management solutions deployed through Microsoft Office Outlook or an Internet browser to help your customers efficiently automate workflows and centralize information.
• Office Web Apps provide on-demand access to the Web-based version of the Microsoft Office suite of applications, including Office Word, Office Excel, and Office PowerPoint.

Get started

Find the right technology experts, software applications, and professional services to help you establish a cloud computing solution for your college or university.

Next steps

• See hosted e-mail success stories, including what other IT professionals have to say about the benefits of Live@edu.
• Find a partner to help you simplify IT management with cloud computing.
• Contact us to learn more about cloud computing.