The different waves of technological revolutions in recent years have made it imperative for educational companies to adapt to the changes they bring. The Azure cloud platform is one of such revolutions and it offers a number of critical benefits to the educational industry. Here are three major ways educational companies can leverage Azure cloud services.
- Serve students
Gone are the days when students could do without technological literacy. As the job market continues to evolve, many employers are now making technological skills a key requirement. Sadly, many job applicants today don’t have the needed skills and knowledge that can brighten their chances of getting hired and help them to be successful at these positions,
In a bid to solve this problem, Microsoft stepped in to provide interested students with everything they need to develop technical skills. In 2015, the company’s support program kicked off with provision of free Azure subscriptions to junior coders who wanted to develop and deploy new software.
Today, students from more than 140 countries can leverage the features to build and distribute custom applications. They also get the opportunity to learn how to effectively use productivity tools in Microsoft Office, a basic skill that has now one of the most requested by hiring managers
- Empower instructors
Educators are not left out as they also have the opportunity to use Microsoft’s Azure platform too. One of the ways the company empowers instructors is through its program called ‘The Educator’s Grant’, which is an initiative that allows educators to offer advanced programming courses through its cloud computing service. More than 750 institutions of higher learning across 74 countries are beneficiaries of the program today.
Furthermore, the company provides both instructors and students with access to Imagine Academy, a complete technology education that was designed to bride the skills gap by offering digital curriculum and certifications on fundamental technology skills. About 150,000 institutions are currently participants in the program.
In addition, Microsoft also partnered with Open University in the UK to develop a comprehensive online course delivery system. A significant percentage of the students who enrolled in distance learning courses have taken advantage of the partnership.
Taking it up by a notch, the company used Azure to create a cost-effective innovation that could effectively store, deliver and automatically categorize third-party assets. The solution was the prize for Best Cloud Project of the Year at the 2015 Computer Weekly European User Awards.
- Nurture nimble infrastructures
Azure has also proven to be immensely beneficial to academic researchers who rely on it to dissect big ideas and solve complex problems. Perhaps, the most popular use is for crunching survey big data while others leverage it as a tool when they apply for grants and receive funding for projects that could shape the future.
As a way of restating its commitment to helping nonprofit groups and educational institutions develop solutions to humanity’s challenges, the company donated $1 billion to more than 70,000 academic institutions worldwide.
Wrap-up
With Azure, educational companies don’t need to buy, maintain or own their servers. Even more, the cloud computing platform has shown to be effective in helping to train educators, equip students with tech skills and partner with groups that aim to solve societal challenges.
