Hello Everyone

 

Most of you will know that Barfield used to be part of a Federation and the IT was managed by Jon Wilson. He now Head of IT for The Shared Learning Trust whilst I am Head of IT for Barnfield College. He has asked me to forward this email onto you all regarding some research he is doing around Cloud provision. His email will better explain it:

 

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Hello,

 

Please excuse the direct approach here.  I am currently working as the Head of IT at The Shared Learning Trust, a multi academy trust.  I previously took part in this forum as Head of IT Services at the Barnfield Federation.    I am currently carrying out a research project to complete my MSc.  I have chosen to look at the use of Cloud providers for file storage e.g.  One Drive, Google Docs etc.  The idea of this study is to examine the risks associated with using Cloud storage providers and come up with a series of recommendations, a framework for how this should be implemented within education.  Whilst there are certainly guidelines available on general cloud use, this would look to focus specifically on file storage in small/medium educational establishments.

 

We certainly see the benefits of moving out file storage to the cloud in terms of cost, backup, amounts of data etc  -  In no way am I negative either.  Having moved all our e-mail to 365 recently, this is a real breath of fresh air.  We are just concerned around some areas such as:-

 

•             Network recovery/Business Continuity

•             Privacy, compliance and monitoring of data storage.

•             Monitoring of system misuse and maliciously removed content.

•             Impact of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for file storage for different types of organisation.

 

What I would like to do is to come and see some of you, or have a telephone conversation about these areas and get your views.  From these initial interviews, the plan is to construct a wider survey that I would hope some of you will be prepared to complete for me (survey-monkey style or similar).  At all times, any information you provide will be anonymised and no specific comments will be tied back to organisations.  I have no intention of publishing any of the contents, but would certainly look to share the findings and the framework with this group.  Alongside this, there will be a literature review of relevant papers to assist with the study.

 

I would appreciate it if you can let me know in the first instance if you would be interested in taking part in an initial discussion/interview and/or the later completion of a survey. If during the process I can be of assistance to you in anyway, please let me know as I have 15 years of experience of managing IT in FE and Schools (for what it is worth!).

 

Any assistance you can provide will be appreciated.

 

Please reply to [log in to unmask]

 

Kind regards

 

Jon Wilson

Head of IT 

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The Shared Learning Trust
York Street, Luton, Bedfordshire, LU2 0EZ
Tel: 01582 211239

 

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 Thanks for taking your time in reading this.

 

Paul Rolfe

Head of IT

Barnfield College