Within just a matter of weeks, the school migrated to the Microsoft cloud, ageing hardware was decommissioned and refreshed, and the IT environment was instantly more secure.
Established over 500 years ago from the times of Henry VI, King’s College School is a prestigious preparatory school and an affiliation of King’s College University, Cambridge. With 120 staff and around 400 pupils ranging from ages 4 to 13, the school is dedicated to preparing children for a future of exceptional possibilities. Many of the students are destined for Eton College or other top public schools.
“The school was operating its IT on an on-premise only basis, heavily reliant on ageing, local servers with a very small internet presence that was difficult to manage,”explains Richy Gogin, Head of Technical Provision at King’s College School. “Data was stored in siloes around the campus and our Microsoft licencing was costly for a school of our size.”
One of the school’s core business goals was the strategic re-development of the IT environment. Richy continues: “In line with our school’s vision, our long term plan was to migrate to the cloud. However, we remained concerned about the risks and reliability of making such a bold move.”
After meeting Microsoft Gold Partner and Cloud Productivity partner, AspiraCloud, at an EdTech exhibition, the school was introduced to the concept of a hybrid approach to the cloud.
Richy goes on: “By adopting a hybrid approach, we have the best the cloud has to offer, whilst maintaining granular control of the campus infrastructure.” Within just a matter of weeks, AspiraCloud helped the school migrate both SharePoint and Exchange, including all content and mailboxes, to the Microsoft 365 cloud, ageing hardware was decommissioned and refreshed, and the IT environment was instantly more secure. Disaster recovery was set up in Azure and combined with a comprehensive review of the current licencing in place, the school was uplifted from an A1 to E3 Microsoft 365 licence package, which was much more cost effective and in line with business requirements. The school has also embraced Cloud First Support from AspiraCloud to remotely manage their IT systems, so the school IT team can focus on more strategic plans.”
“With the support of AspiraCloud, the project was really straightforward and delivered in just four weeks!” reveals Richy. “Since making the move, we have experienced significant cost savings for the school – at least £20k over 4 years. Both students and staff now have access to a more modern and secure service, and should anything go wrong, we know we have the back of up the AspiraCloud Cloud First Support IT service to keep us up and running.”
“AspiraCloud are Microsoft 365 licencing experts and has extensive experience working in the education sector,” Richy concludes. “Today, we see AspiraCloud as a trusted strategic partner to our school. Over the years, the AspiraCloud team has made relevant recommendations to help us get the most out of Microsoft 365, from introducing us to anti-virus technology, 2 Factor Authentication, and more recently, the Shape the Future program, so we can now purchase devices with discounted Windows licenses.”
Moving forward, King’s College School is looking to introduce IoS devices on a 1-2-1 basis for pupils across years 6-8 within the school and will work with AspiraCloud to roll out an endpoint management solution.
If you want to find out more or do the same for your school, simply get in touch.