How COVID-19 is affecting IT projects in schools
As teachers, students and parents settle into the new normal of lesson delivery, CRN investigates the challenges it has placed on specialist resellers and what the education sector might look like post-pandemic
Nearly four weeks ago, students across the nation were most likely rejoicing over school closures and possibly singing ‘school's out for the foreseeable future' (to generously paraphrase Alice Cooper).
However, their jubilance may have been somewhat dimmed by the successful pivot to remote learning by educational institutes up and down the UK, thanks in part to the Herculean efforts of resellers to ensure school remained in session.
This shift has been one of the most notable effects of the COVID-19 outbreak and has been one of the contributors to the increased demand for devices from resellers.
Some projects have inevitably been cancelled, but some, partners told CRN, are able to be completed faster as schools are mostly empty.
As students and educators settle into their new normal, CRN investigates what this monumental shift means for edtech resellers and what the future holds for the sector post-outbreak.
Project work
Some education specialists have seen projects delayed as a result of the global pandemic. Mike Bacon, managing director of Academia - which counts Apple, HPE and Lenovo among its partners - said that though he has experienced projects being postponed, he has seen an upturn in the "short-term opportunity" of remote learning.
"There's been a downturn - all project work has been put on hold, including some of the big summer rollouts," he explained.
"But it's been replaced with a short-term opportunity to basically enable remote learning. [Education customers] are trying to adapt their own existing systems rather than take something off the shelf, so it's either Office 365 - particularly Teams - or the whole G-Suite piece."
Constraints on stock have eased in the last fortnight as IT kit needed by the NHS has been deployed in trusts and hospitals, he added.
"There are clearly questions around stock constraints in the system and that's definitely freeing up now, so even if you can't get the model that you want, you can get close to it," he said.
"The primary allocation went to NHS trusts - which we've fully supported - and I think that's calmed down a bit now, so there's new stock available.
"In terms of the schools wanting to set things up quickly, we've seen schools with processes that might take nine months, take nine days. There's definitely been fast-tracking of some of the larger deployments."
Some channel education specialists are seeing a silver lining in the closure of schools as it is allowing them to work on projects that are usually given a short period of time to be done.
Phil Race, chief exec of AIM-listed Adept Technology Group, said projects that were previously forced into the six-week summer holiday window are now able to be done on-site due to the reduced amount of people around school buildings.
"It actually hasn't had too much impact on our education team because quite often doing installation work or project work in schools is very difficult as it gets confined to school holidays - you compress a lot of activity in a very short space of time," he elaborated.
"Schools are providing services for key workers and continue to require our services, so it takes that pressure off our diary to do work. Equally, we're still providing managed services and solutions to schools because they still employ individuals even if they are now working from a remote location. Of course, it has suppressed demand a little bit, but there are still services required, there's still work to do and we've been able to get on with it."
Another positive to come out of this is the recognition by public sector customers that refurbished IT is just as good as brand-new kit, according to Stone Group's CEO Simon Harbridge.
The reseller has an established IT asset disposition (ITAD) unit which Harbridge said is seeing demand for its refurbished kit, although he acknowledged this is likely due to the need for devices rather than for environmental reasons.
"There's a huge demand for devices across the board, so refurbished devices is just part of that. We've provided a huge range of refurbished mobile devices to education, to NHS workers and the police," he stated.
"The message of the circular economy hasn't necessarily been at the forefront and been the focus because it's just been the demand for mobile devices; refurbished devices at a price point is a great way to get a large number quickly and within a budget.
"That circular economy message has kind of been a little lost in that rush but it's still a very powerful solution. For example, when there is a constraint on new product coming from China, the ability to repurpose and reuse what we've already got has been very important.
"We've provided huge numbers of refurbished devices to people who probably wouldn't be able to get anything otherwise - that's been hugely important."
Long-term lessons
The reseller bosses all had conflicting ideas on what the education sector will look like in the wake of COVID-19, and what that could entail for education-focused channel firms.
Academia's Bacon reckons schools will pivot back to their pre-outbreak operations much quicker than businesses will, primarily as he can't see teachers wanting to continue working from home in the same way people in other industries might want to.
"It's an emergency situation now. Teachers don't want children to work from home; they go into school for far more reasons than just IT infrastructure," he stated.
"The fact that they can work online for things like homework and project work is a benefit and the one-to-one ownership of the device is already a thing, so I think things will go back to normal.
"Projects can't be on hold indefinitely. If we are locked down for, say, another six weeks, there'll come a point where the schools will say ‘there's no point going back for the summer term', so they'll just go straight into summer holidays.
By then we'll be out the back end of [the pandemic] and it could be back to school as normal in September, so projects will all reinstate, in my opinion.
"This is not a situation which has changed things fundamentally forever. It's a massive blip, but it's a short-term one."
Adept's Race, however, is of the opinion that the current crisis has shown that the education industry is just as adaptable as others and that distance learning may see a rise in popularity after the pandemic.
"We're still wedded to this concept of a classroom and a physical location in the UK," he elaborated.
"Whereas if you look at some Asian economies they use distance learning right across age groups, but we tend to do that more in universities. That capability may well be something that we'll embrace more readily when we go back to the way it was.
"I think the whole thing about distance learning, using resources and not being tied to the classroom is a highly potential long-term change."
Stone's Harbridge believes the sudden change in how curricula are delivered is a hard lesson learnt by education institutes in the importance of keeping abreast of the fundamentals of digital transformation.
"I don't think the basic model [of school operations] will change but I do believe it will have transformed the technology landscape," he said.
"There are some fantastic, glowing examples of people really using a modern way of delivering the curriculum. It certainly will have accelerated the digital transformation of education and skills because they've had to do it.
"Those slow adopters will have learned what they need to learn and it will have been a painful process, but I don't think they'll fall back to what it was before on the technology front."
Another consequence of the pandemic on education is the value the industry sees and places on the channel, Harbridge added. Huge demands were put on resellers for quick deliveries which were achieved, while the resellers themselves were trying to enact and adapt to the abrupt changes in their own businesses.
"It's proven just how important it is to have a truly reliable IT partner; they wouldn't have been able to do it without the support of the channel," he stated.
"When you really need that partnership and your partner steps up and helps you solve some of these problems, I think that'll be remembered."