Cloud giant
Microsoft is helping its education customers in Europe and the United States move to the cloud by reducing its fees. With headquarters in Redmond, Washington, United States, Microsoft is a global brand most widely recognized for its MS Office software and Windows operating system. With the introduction of Office365 and Azure, Microsoft has shifted focus to the cloud over recent years. The company’s latest efforts are intended to help educational organizations move to a “consumption-based” IT model that revolves around the cloud.
One of the obstacles to educational organizations transitioning to the cloud is the possibility of costs such as egress data fees inflating monthly payments. Egress fees are charged for moving data out of the cloud and current fees for transfers between five gigabytes and 10 terabytes per month in Europe or North America are $0.087 per gigabyte of data. Transfers to other parts of the world are more expensive. To overcome this obstacle, Microsoft has agreed to remove such fees for European educational customers utilizing Azure.
"Based on Microsoft's extensive experience engaging and working with the academic community, we strongly believe educational institutions of all types and sizes can benefit from cloud services, for research as well as for teaching and learning environments," suggested Microsoft’s Education Team on the company’s blog. “Microsoft also understands the need for academia to better manage costs when transitioning from traditional licensing to a consumption-based model, and we are always looking for ways to make the transition to the cloud easier for the community”.
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