IT Trends

Edsby Moves Services to Microsoft Azure Cloud

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 11/03/16

School districts concerned about putting student data into clouds that cross borders now have the option of selecting a Microsoft Azure data center by location. Specifically, Microsoft is working with Edsby, which has a learning management system for K–12. Under the new agreement Edsby is running its programs on Microsoft's cloud computing platform but can enable a school system to store its academic data in the country or region where it operates to comply with regulations and local preferences.

Edsby expects the move to help it deliver greater scalability and performance to its school customers.

The migration includes adoption of Azure SQL Database for data management and development, Azure Storage for tiered storage and Azure Portal for unified console management, explained Steven Asbury, Edsby's co-founder and vice president of engineering, in a press release. "The software porting and customer data migration took just a few months, and we are now recognizing many benefits, such as improved performance, scalability-on-demand, more flexible storage, back-end monitoring/analytics, a better high availability and disaster recovery offering and other efficiencies."

Edsby already supported the Microsoft Azure Active Directory, which allows for one-click authentication; Microsoft OneDrive access for Edsby users on Office 365; and, soon, support for integrations between Edsby and OneNote Class Notebook. The company is also working to embed Azure Power BI into its analytics offering.

Earlier this year, Microsoft named Edsby a finalist for global 2016 Education Partner of the Year. The winner for that category ended up being 3P Learning, which delivers digital content and games in math, spelling, reading and science. That cloud-based service is also hosted on Azure.