Email from the cloud cuts costs for education institutions

A number of UK educational institutions have spoken for the first time about how they are saving money using Microsoft's live@edu cloud offering.

Among the first in the UK to use the platform was the University of Aberdeen, which moved its 14,500 students to Microsoft's outsourced email service, and estimates that it is saving around £60,000 a year as a result of the migration.

According to Microsoft, moving existing services to the cloud can have considerable cost-saving implications. As well as cloud email services being either free or low cost, the company said that there are other savings that come from buying, running, maintaining and replacing less hardware as well as needing fewer software licences.

The University of Aberdeen 's programme manager, Mike Whyment, explained that he opted for live@edu because of both the affordability of the solution and because the old email system no longer met the increased expectations of today's students.

"Our existing student email system was coming to the end of its life. We had a natural point of reinvestment, either to invest in a new on-site system or outsource, which was clearly the cheaper option," said Whyment.

Meanwhile, Chichester University also adopted Microsoft's cloud email services for both staff and students, with cost, again, being the primary driver.

"We had an email and calendar system that had become outdated, and so two years ago we started to look at alternatives," said James Mason, head of IT operations.

"We quickly realised that for what our students were demanding we couldn't afford to buy [our own equipment] and had to go for a hosted solution."

Microsoft argues that schools, colleges and universities do not manage the provision of electricity or water in-house, and that IT is becoming a utility too. As a result, it is more efficient and cost-effective for education institutions to use a hosted IT service as well, according to Microsoft's director of education Steve Beswick.

"We deliver a service which is there for every school, college, university – and every teacher and student. It opens up the possibility of a richer environment for less cost and we're excited about what could happen as a result," he said.