Cloud

Schools Increasingly Turn to the Cloud for Email, Storage

New research shows that K–12 IT professionals put faith in cloud services, nagging security concerns notwithstanding.

Meg Conlan

Twitter

Meg is an editor for the CDW family of technology magazine websites.

The future of education lies in the cloud.

According to a new infographic from CDW•G, 67 percent of school IT solutions are delivered fully or partially through the cloud, up from 42 percent in 2014. That latest figure is from a May 2016 survey of more than 400 K–12 IT professionals.

“Education is shifting that way,” said Mike Patterson, a K–12 education strategist with CDW•G, when he introduced some of the findings during last week’s International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Conference in Denver.

The survey also found that even as schools move email, storage and web hosting to the cloud, IT professionals continue to harbor concerns about data privacy and security. But despite their fears, schools have found reasons to move forward with the change.

Check out the CDW•G infographic to learn more about where schools are on the path to the cloud, as well as barriers to adoption and the classroom successes schools have seen.