Out-sourcing Rationale
Some schools like to do everything themselves in the name of keeping control over their own data. Keeping your data "on site" is unarguably one way of keeping it safe. But is it the best way?
Taken separately, each of the requirements for maintaining your own Web services appears reasonable:
- Keeping all of your data on your own servers requires that you have on site a higher level of tech expertise than the average teacher posesses. Well and good.
- Keeping your data on-site requires that you maintain your own Web servers in addition to your LAN servers. Well and good.
- Ensuring that your Web server is always accessible from the outside requires a better connection to the Internet. Well and good.
- Maintaining your own equipment requires you to shoulder all the expenses of upgrades and system failures. Well and good.
When you add them all up, however, you might reasonably wonder if the costs outweigh the benefits, espeically when outsourcing to iteachnet.org can be done with guaranteed security, confidentiality, and daily off-site backups.
We can do it all for you at less expense and with less worry than you can do it for yourself. You focus on on the business of education and we'll focus on ours: educational networking. It's our business to do it better.
