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Charteris Microsoft technologies case study The Edinburgh Academy may be nearly 200 years old, but its use of technology is completely up-to-date. With support from Charteris, this prestigious independent school for boys and girls has implemented the latest Microsoft desktop and server operating systems...

Great for academic institutions that are ready to take advantage of the cloud. Office 365 offers free email, instant messaging, group video and voice chat, and online document viewing and editing. We’ve got a great video that shows how Office 365 for education has enabled the University of Massachusetts...

The Open University (OU)—which specialises in distance learning—is the biggest university in the United Kingdom (U.K.). It needed to reduce costs and improve communication among its 5,000 office-based academic and administrative staff, giving them access to features such as instant messaging and presence...

We’re hearing more and more about the way Microsoft Lync Server 2010 is set to change the nature of working life in universities. At Nottingham Trent University , for example, with 24,000 students on three campuses across the City, Unified Communications Team Leader Thomas Farrand, has made great strides...

Contribution from freelance writer, Gerald Haigh.   Gerald writes regularly for the Microsoft UK Education blogs.   I graduated from the Open University , I’m proud to say, as a member of the very first intake – the “Class of ‘71”. Earlier this Summer we were royally treated to a celebration...

The Microsoft IT team publish case studies of how we've used our own products within our own infrastructure - sharing their real-life experiences. This month there's a case study about the way that we've implemented the security features in Windows Server 2008 R2, along with Windows 7 on the desktop...

You may be interested to read how we've rolled out power saving settings within Microsoft (and if you think your lecturers are hard to please with technology, imagine what it's like providing IT services for 100,000+ IT geeks). Our IT team at Microsoft have recently implemented a worldwide power management...

We will be holding our annual Microsoft Higher Education Briefing on Monday 15 th November 2010 at the Microsoft Campus in Reading, Berkshire. The agenda for the event runs from 10:00 to 4:15 with breaks to catch up with colleagues from other universities. As well as getting the latest news on Microsoft’s...

I’ve just been reading a press release from Quest , about Kingston University’s project to to give staff and students virtual access to their university desktop and learning resources from any location, on a wide range of devices, at any time. With 23,000 students, and 2,000 full-time staff to serve...

We have a team, called Microsoft Global Foundation Services , who have the job of building clouds. Or at least, building ‘the Cloud’ – they design, build, run and support our global data centres which are at the hub of all of our cloud services. In Europe, we have one in Ireland and one in Holland. I...

There’s an interesting TechNet article all about how our IT team keep Microsoft.com up and running . Alongside the article, there’s also a webcast available, so that you can explore the story in more detail. As learning becomes more reliant on technology generally, and the web specifically, then there...

One of the themes from the UCISA conference this year, from the first keynote on, was the possibility of massive upheaval in the higher education sector in the UK. Tough spending reviews, new ways of doing things and the very imminent possibility of multiple mergers and acquisitions between universities...

If you are providing secure remote access to your IT systems for staff, then you may want to review whether there are more efficient ways of enabling it. Especially now that there are sophisticated built-in capabilities in the Windows systems that you’ve got running on your servers and laptops. (eg DirectAccess...

With increasing governances and fiscal demands, Northumbria University needed a way for their managers to quickly and easily track critical financial and student data. After implementing its Microsoft Business Intelligence solution, their stakeholders now have access to near real-time, streaming reports...

The SharePoint team have created the Social Computing with SharePoint website. Although it is primarily designed to examine the use of social computing within a business context, it is relevant to universities in the UK, and there is an excellent video and written case study of the Washington State University...

Thanks to some research I’m doing on behalf of a university in North East England, one of my colleagues in the US passed on details of the University of Kentucky and the project to implement a unified communications platform.  This has surfaced both a Microsoft and Gartner case study. In summary...

“Explore how to make IT more cost-effective in uncertain times. Microsoft and partners invite you to this invitation-only event.” Dan sent me details of our “Virtualisation and Management Conference” on 10th March. Overall it makes good agenda, but I do take issue with the phrase “ …in these uncertain...

Talking with the University of Aberdeen, they thought that hey had one of the biggest student wireless networks in Europe. There to allow their students to connect to the VLE and the Internet, wherever they are on campus – from their own laptops. The drive to provide ever-improving services to students...

One of Microsoft's education partners in the UK, Waterstons , is hosting an event with Durham Business School and Microsoft in Durham on the 6 August 2008 at 12:00. The Agenda will be based on the following: Registration and refreshments - 12:00pm Seminar starts at 12:30pm Introduction Dominic Watts...

The Windows Server launch team have made available the video of the Cambridge University team, who are using modern database technologies to solve a centuries-old data analysis problem. If you're into databases, and their uses, then this is a good video to watch now. But if you're like me, and the mysteries...

It's always pleasing when the work of education establishments is held up as a shining example of best practice use of technology. And it was pleasing last month, at the Windows Server 2008 launch event, that there was a fascinating insight into the way that one of the research teams at Cambridge University...

You're probably already familiar with SharePoint, and some of its capabilities to support communication and collaboration for both students and staff. But what never ceases to amaze me are the other uses that people find for it in education. Coventry University has 17,000 students, and has recently moved...

Salford Software is hosting an event on 2 nd April at the Microsoft offices in Reading to explore Microsoft Live @ edu (one of the services that's part of Collaborative Campus) The agenda presents an information packed half-day, offering you the opportunity to hear more about Microsoft Live @ edu, and...

Talking to a US colleague recently, he was telling me about various projects worldwide where universities are bringing together all of their communications and messaging systems. He referred me to the case studies published in the last six months of things happening in schools and colleges in Asia and...

At IT Forum this week, I ran into an old friend, Neil Williams, Head of IT and eLearning Development at the University of Derby. It was a great opportunity to discuss some of the issues raised throughout the week with somebody facing issues at the business end of IT. We've spent a week looking at IT...