This society we’ve set up for ourselves is a little bit backwards, isn’t it?

Now, we’re no economic experts, but if you take a look at last year’s federal budget something is definitely wrong. This year just 4% of the federal budget is dedicated to education, and that percentage is projected to shrink to 3% in 2016.

Schools do get more money from the states and their districts, but it still doesn’t come close to the amount required to provide all of our nation’s children with the education they deserve.

Any school that is forced to cut back should look to their IT expenses first, as outsourcing your IT support with the right provider will allow you to pull off a near-impossible trick, the 7 – 10 split of budgeting: cutting costs without sacrificing anything.

Here are a couple questions you should ask to make sure you get the right provider should you decide to outsource IT support for your school:

Will I Be Able to Improve the Tools I’m Providing My Teachers and Students?

Outsourcing your IT needs to Colorado Computer Support will free of up more room in your budget for upgrading your technology. We recommend (and offer full consulting and support for) the following:

• Office 365: the cloud-based Office 365 offering a subscription payment model that is much more affordable than the physical copies that were previously used to distribute Office products. And it’s more than just affordable: the mobility of Office 365 is sure to benefit the growing number (and already a majority in most areas) of students that have their own laptop and/or smartphone.
• Google Chromebooks and iPads: Office 365 is great, but we’re no Microsoft fanboys: on the hardware side of things, Google and Apple also have plenty to offer your school. The iPad (particularly the iPad Air 2) is simply the best tablet on the market. Chromebooks are ridiculously affordable, and they are just as powerful and have just as many features as many laptops that cost more than twice as much.

How Are You Going To Reduce My IT Budget?

We just told you in the previous section that “outsourcing your IT needs to Colorado Computer Support will free of up more room in your budget,” but we moved on before actually explaining how we accomplish that goal.

Allow us to pick up the slack here and explain exactly how we will save you money.

With a small amount of funds to work with, it’s hard enough for most schools just to pay their teachers, so it’s pretty rare for them to have their own in-house IT department. Rather, they’ll get by as best they can with the help of tech-inclined parent and teacher volunteers.

These volunteers are helpful, but they don’t provide the skill set or resources that are used by IT professional to keep your network truly reliable and secure. As a result, schools that depend on volunteers most likely have a network that is prone to web-based attacks and hardware failures.

Colorado Computer Support offers the best of both worlds: you’ll get the level of service you need, at a price you can actually afford. For less than the cost of a single full-time in-house IT worker, we’ll secure your network, maintain your hardware, support your software, and virtualize your servers. Also, you’ll get direct access to high-end IT talent for advanced strategy and long-term planning.

Our solution focuses on being proactive and actively preventing downtime rather than losing focus when there isn’t an immediate problem to solve. With our help you’ll have less malware infections, more reliable hardware, and fewer instances of downtime. Preventing disaster will greatly reduce your IT expenses: and that’s how we reduce your budget.

Unfortunately, we can’t get schools the funding they truly deserve. What we can do is help you get the most value possible out of a limited IT budget. Contact us at (719) 355-2440 or blake@coloradosupport.com for more information.