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'Channel yet to grab circular economy opportunity with education sector' - Microsoft's education boss

Chris Rothwell says that education buyers will be placing more of an emphasis on sustainable approaches this year

The channel is failing to grasp the opportunity presented by the circular economy with education customers, according to Microsoft's UK education director Chris Rothwell.

Sustainability and the circular economy have become "prominent" talking points with education buyers recently, Rothwell (pictured) said, explaining that while the subject is out of the comfort zone for many partners, it will become increasingly important for the sector.

"Some partners are doing a great job of it, and lots are still not, so there will be a broad adoption curve where you've got a small number of resellers who are absolutely pushing that message," he told CRN at the BETT edtech event in London's ExCel centre.

"We've got some partners that do some really great stuff around taking commercial devices and refurbishing them ready for educational purposes and giving them another, longer life and significantly reducing waste and carbon.

"But I don't yet feel from the channel that we've got sustainability as a core message and, fair enough, because I don't think that we have necessarily had that as a core message that we've taken to customers, either."

Rothwell said that until recently Microsoft itself could have been accused of not making the circular economy a core message but that its recently announced carbon-reduction goals mean that sustainability now has to be embedded throughout the organisation.

"From a reseller's perspective, it is one of those pillars where you get to change the conversation with the customer, rather than saying ‘let's talk about the laptop, let's talk about the network' - which we're all comfortable doing working in the IT sector," he stated.

"Talking about sustainability, talking about accessibility, talking about how we're empowering learners - those things are really different conversations to have but the customer actually wants to have them, and it connects the device and the network to what they're going to do for the client.

"That's such a powerful conversation to have that all of us need to be pushing to get to those topics with our customers."

Rothwell noted that educational institutions - particularly universities - are feeling the effects of the younger generation's environmental concerns, as sustainability becomes an important factor for students who are seeking higher-level institutes that align with their values.

"Our customers, particularly the larger ones, are thinking about their impact and what that means for them as institutions and what that means for the students who are thinking about going there," he said.

"We are having conversations around how our technology can help the organisation; one way is that we will run our datacentres in this particularly sustainable way - almost certainly more than our customers are able to do."

The Microsoft exec outlined data and adoption as two areas of opportunity for partners. As schools and institutes process more data they are now no longer just concerned about protecting that data, but how to use it to improve their operations.

Under-resourced teachers and administrators often have to grapple with learning and deploying new software in their own time, he added.

"Sometimes new tech just appears and they are expected to figure it out - and teachers are extremely stretched and have lots of competing priorities," he said.

"For partners, focusing on how you help them make that change is incredibly empowering for the individual teachers.

"We want to get customers thinking about what the technology is going to do for them; it's not about buying a device, it's about how it will affect teaching and learning.

"If they don't have a plan and aren't sure what to do next, the device ultimately ends up not really being used or not having the impact that it could."

Rothwell used the vendor's recently launched Teams feature Class Insights, which allows teachers to review a student's engagement and performance, as an example for partners to utilise when in conversation with education customers.

"How do you go the step beyond that says to a teacher ‘Let's talk about the things you're going to do differently now that this technology is available to you'? Because if you deploy it and the teacher continues to teach in exactly the same way as before, that's probably not that helpful," he said.

"Once you start to show the benefits of features like OneNote and Class Insights...that's when you really start to get these virtuous cycle benefits where the student gets expanded learning opportunities and the teacher gets to save time.

"That sort of tipping point begins to happen and the school begins to work differently."