Photo credit: Michael Surran/Flickr.

As public sector cuts continue to tighten the purse strings of the UK's schools, the organisation Commercial Services could offer money-saving cloud computing solutions for their IT departments.

Commercial Services is the trading arm of the Kent County Council and is now using its experience in the education sector to extend its cloud solutions to help cash strapped schools up and down the country.

Nick Bird, from the Technical Services division of Commercial Services, explained how by using the Ubiquitous service “schools can get a very efficient ICT infrastructure but only have to pay for it on a subscription basis. That's particularly important for schools when they haven't got high levels of in-house ICT support.”

Ubiquitous is part of Technical Services. Its hardware and software solution is aimed at providing the education sector with IT solutions which could save it time and money while increasing employee efficiency.

Ubiquitous, which started earlier this year, has two schools signed up already to its services and is looking to expand further into the private sector and local councils with its cloud-based IT solutions.

By freeing up money and space typically consumed by on-site servers, Ubiquitous, which use Sun Ray Oracle Technology, will enable money to instead be spent on more computers and laptops for pupils.

Ubiquitous, Nick Bird told us, will also help the education sector to reduce its carbon footprint by removing the on-site servers and the air-conditioning systems that are needed to cool them. “The school doesn't have to run its own server and the Sun Ray Oracle Technology uses less power so it is a much greener solution,” he said.

With the new system students will be able to work from remote locations. Devices such as computers and laptops could be monitored and managed remotely too, allowing the IT department to perform system changes or software upgrades with far greater ease, thus improving efficiency for pupils and staff alike.

Chris Geary, head of business solutions for Technical Services, said: “Being part of Kent County Council provides us with a strong knowledge base of the education sector. We understand many of the challenges faced by the sector.

“This knowledge allows us to provide a completely hosted or partially hosted service designed around the specific needs of education establishments. In some cases we have been able to double the amount of desk based workstations without increasing the actual IT spend.”

As well as the work Technical Services does within the education sector, it is also looking to work with the NHS, local councils and private sector companies, particularly when it comes to the issue of data security on laptops. Nick Bird said: “We are also talking to a number of councils and private sector companies about using this technology as a way of managing laptops.”

As the Ubiquitous service enables information to be stored on a centralised server rather than locally, sensitive data is not at risk if a laptop is lost or stolen – something which has emerged as a major issue in recent years.