Cloud Cost Management with Efficient and Effective Spending in K–12

Cloud Cost Optimization Options for Storage and Computing

When it comes to optimizing cloud costs, storage is an area where schools should evaluate their spending. To start, K–12 administrators and IT professionals need to deeply understand what data they’re storing and how frequently they access it. The storage on Google Workspace, for example, is much more costly than long-term or archival storage on Google Cloud.

IT staff must be aware of the storage content they’re paying for. For instance, what content are users touching once a year at most? In K–12 schools, there are a lot of old records that users may not touch for four or five years, if ever. IT professionals need to understand what content can be archived.

By moving certain content to long-term storage, schools can see their cloud storage costs drop significantly.

Schools can also factor costs into their budgets predictably with certain cloud computing and storage models. As schools innovate, they sometimes see large and unexpected cloud costs associated with these digital innovations. One solution is Google’s cloud subscription model, which allows schools to budget for their cloud costs year after year.

This ties back to planning for effective and efficient spending, because schools can make budgetary decisions for how the enrollment cliff is going to impact them and what the cloud cost is going to be in those scenarios. They can anticipate attendance — because funding is based on the number of students enrolled — so they can also calculate future student enrollment and how it impacts their budget. A great way to anticipate attendance is with Google Cloud’s Vertex AI in conjunction with schools’ data analytics for predictive modeling. Using Vertex AI can help IT leaders make decisions based on their understanding of what future consumption is likely to be.

Modernize Cloud-Based Applications to Reduce Redundancy

Software is another area where schools can roll back costs. Schools should bring all of their app purchases back to the district level, rather than giving the funding to each site. This way, if educators want to purchase an app, they do it through the IT department. This prevents schools from buying, say, seven apps that do the same thing. It will be cheaper to buy one solution in bulk that meets all users’ needs.

This also helps inform the district of what school sites think they need and allows the district to provide professional development around that.

Starting this process can be a massive undertaking, especially if the goal for schools is understanding what their current application environment looks like. Working with partners such as CDW can help schools make informed decisions and change their processes to align with their budgets and meet their financial goals. The experts at CDW can see how all of a school’s applications connect, and they can pull inventory of apps that are being underutilized.

RELATED: What is CDW’s Strategic Application Modernization Assessment?

Modernizing applications allows programs to become more efficient and more scalable. They become easier to maintain as well, because modern technology is being used. In the long run, this helps reduce operational costs.

Legacy systems are rampant in K–12, and app modernization is an obvious choice that can benefit overall digital modernization and long-term operational costs. While it can be pricey to move to a modernized application in the interim, the long-term savings will add up. For many schools, that long-term vision has lapsed. But it’s needed, if schools want their programs to remain sustainable.