Gerald Haigh, an educational writer and journalist, spoke with a range of people involved with the adoption of Cloud services in education. Both within Microsoft, and from education institutions already using Cloud services for their students and staff.

We don't normally expect a school, college or university to generate its own electricity. There‟s no building with a bank of generators, no "Manager of Electrical Generation", leading a team of technicians and adding to the woes of a vice-chancellor, principal, head or business manager. That would surely be absurd, when all that‟s really needed is a big "On-Off" switch and a phone to shout down when the service fails. But we have expected our education institutions to be experts at running their own "IT Power Stations", generating their own utility service. Even though, as consumers, we are increasingly using IT as a utility service - to communicate, collaborate, work and play.
You may see where this is going. We believe we are at a critical turning point, and it‟s time to debate the future provision of IT in education. And at the centre of this change is "the Cloud".
Attempts to define Cloud computing often make the analogy with the development of public utilities - electricity, gas, water - where the move from on-site, or very local generation, through to national and international distribution has brought increased efficiency and lower costs.
So, goes the argument, why not provide computing power in the same way? It can be "generated" remotely by a factory-size bank of powerful computers ("servers") and delivered over the internet to subscribing consumers who can take as much, or as little as they need.