It’s a challenge that nearly every school district must face: how to balance the need for IT modernization with the budgetary realities of modern K–12 education?

The answer is typically the product of hard choices and cold analysis. Districts invest what they can where the money is needed most and where their calculations show the greatest return on investment. They adopt those technologies that they know are critically important to teaching and learning while setting the district up for success.

This was part of the strategy for Indianapolis Public Schools when it launched its “Rebuilding Stronger” program in September 2021. As the largest K–12 district in Indiana, IPS announced the initiative would be a way to “reinvent, rebuild, redesign and rethink” its schools to ensure every student had equitable access to quality education. There would be many components to the IPS campaign, and IT modernization was one of them. Leveraging the cloud would help take the districts to new heights.

“One of our goals is to be able to support students with the best technology available in the industry,” explains Chenzira Allen, IPS director of digital strategy and transformation.

In late 2021, the district was poorly positioned to achieve that ambition with its existing infrastructure, let alone adopt the latest cloud solutions. Its data center was housed in central Indianapolis in an aging, water-damaged facility. IPS had struggled for years at the site with expensive upgrades and maintenance, yet its technologists had managed to keep the servers up and running. Now, however, with “Rebuilding Stronger,” the time had come to find a better solution.

“It was clear we could not continue to rely on an outdated infrastructure that caused significant limitations,” Allen says.

It’s a challenge that nearly every school district must face: how to balance the need for IT modernization with the budgetary realities of modern K–12 education?

The answer is typically the product of hard choices and cold analysis. Districts invest what they can where the money is needed most and where their calculations show the greatest return on investment. They adopt those technologies that they know are critically important to teaching and learning while setting the district up for success.

This was part of the strategy for Indianapolis Public Schools when it launched its “Rebuilding Stronger” program in September 2021. As the largest K–12 district in Indiana, IPS announced the initiative would be a way to “reinvent, rebuild, redesign and rethink” its schools to ensure every student had equitable access to quality education. There would be many components to the IPS campaign, and IT modernization was one of them. Leveraging the cloud would help take the districts to new heights.

“One of our goals is to be able to support students with the best technology available in the industry,” explains Chenzira Allen, IPS director of digital strategy and transformation.

In late 2021, the district was poorly positioned to achieve that ambition with its existing infrastructure, let alone adopt the latest cloud solutions. Its data center was housed in central Indianapolis in an aging, water-damaged facility. IPS had struggled for years at the site with expensive upgrades and maintenance, yet its technologists had managed to keep the servers up and running. Now, however, with “Rebuilding Stronger,” the time had come to find a better solution.

“It was clear we could not continue to rely on an outdated infrastructure that caused significant limitations,” Allen says.

94%

The percentage of educational organizations that are hosting at least one IT solution in the cloud

Source: Extreme Networks, “Education Is Ready for Cloud Networking,” January 2025

Selecting the Best Option for the District

IPS had a long-standing relationship with CDW as a trusted supplier of its classroom technologies, so Allen and her team reached out to Advanced Technology Account Executive Steve Morrissey at the company for help with infrastructure modernization.

Allen remembers their data-center conversation revolving around two central questions. First, they had to determine what the district required technology-wise to improve its instructional capabilities. And second, they had to consider how their decision would impact the technology team.

They discussed moving the data center to a new site, but that would mean any upgrades and future upkeep would continue to be their IT team’s responsibility. Another option, colocation, would entail investing in new hardware and hiring a third party to manage their server space. Or, they could turn to the cloud — a move that many other districts had pursued with success, Allen and her team knew.

“They were initially thinking that colocation would be their best option,” Morrissey recalls. “They were wondering if we could find an appropriate colocation site, and then consult on the new hardware required as well as assist with the move and implementation.”

Moving wholesale to the cloud felt like a stretch to IPS at the time, Morrissey remembers. The district had a cloud-based student information system and was in the process of adopting Microsoft 365, but there was a lot of uncertainty around whether its applications and servers were going to be able to migrate to the cloud.

“A data center move of this magnitude requires certainty, so I suggested bringing in our advisory services team to see what we could do to clarify things,” he says.

It was CDW Advisory Services Field CIO Jeremy Wonson who ultimately met with Allen and Morrissey to sort through their choices and come up with a plan. The discussion, Wonson recalls, was productive from the start. “We quickly figured out that most of what they had could be migrated very easily,” he says, explaining that his team had previously helped other districts move the same apps. “Knowing that, we started looking at logistics and the costs, coming up with a migration program and a financial model for funding it.”

Selecting the Best Option for the District

IPS had a long-standing relationship with CDW as a trusted supplier of its classroom technologies, so Allen and her team reached out to Advanced Technology Account Executive Steve Morrissey at the company for help with infrastructure modernization.

Allen remembers their data-center conversation revolving around two central questions. First, they had to determine what the district required technology-wise to improve its instructional capabilities. And second, they had to consider how their decision would impact the technology team.

They discussed moving the data center to a new site, but that would mean any upgrades and future upkeep would continue to be their IT team’s responsibility. Another option, colocation, would entail investing in new hardware and hiring a third party to manage their server space. Or, they could turn to the cloud — a move that many other districts had pursued with success, Allen and her team knew.

“They were initially thinking that colocation would be their best option,” Morrissey recalls. “They were wondering if we could find an appropriate colocation site, and then consult on the new hardware required as well as assist with the move and implementation.”

Moving wholesale to the cloud felt like a stretch to IPS at the time, Morrissey remembers. The district had a cloud-based student information system and was in the process of adopting Microsoft 365, but there was a lot of uncertainty around whether its applications and servers were going to be able to migrate to the cloud.

“A data center move of this magnitude requires certainty, so I suggested bringing in our advisory services team to see what we could do to clarify things,” he says.

It was CDW Advisory Services Field CIO Jeremy Wonson who ultimately met with Allen and Morrissey to sort through their choices and come up with a plan. The discussion, Wonson recalls, was productive from the start. “We quickly figured out that most of what they had could be migrated very easily,” he says, explaining that his team had previously helped other districts move the same apps. “Knowing that, we started looking at logistics and the costs, coming up with a migration program and a financial model for funding it.”

94%

The percentage of educational organizations that are hosting at least one IT solution in the cloud

Source: Extreme Networks, “Education Is Ready for Cloud Networking,” January 2025

“It’s a solution that allows us to reimagine our classrooms and also the way our teachers teach.”

— Chenzira Allen, Director of Digital Strategy and Transformation, Indianapolis Public Schools

IPS Finds Flexibility and Security in the Cloud

CDW kicked off the work in 2023 with a discovery and assessment phase to determine exactly which applications could be migrated and which would have to stay onsite. CDW evaluated the apps for their interdependency to ensure they could move without affecting other workloads, examined security and backup requirements, and checked application vendor support to confirm cloud compatibility.

CDW’s experts also developed several financial models showing how the district’s various options would affect costs. “The idea was to model several migration scenarios, from no cloud adoption to full cloud adoption, giving them high and low watermark numbers they could present to the board,” Wonson explains.

District leaders reviewed the CDW analysis and agreed that moving out of the existing data center — and migrating as much to cloud as possible — was the way to go. They decided they would finance the project using remaining Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds, and that CDW would conduct the migration over the summer of 2024.

Allen remembers the excitement she felt once it was certain that change was on the way. She knew what the cloud had to offer — both for the district’s schools and for her team.

“With all of the apps we’re now using in education, and the computing power and storage that we need, it’s a solution that allows us to reimagine our classrooms and also the way our teachers teach,” she says. Cloud migration would immediately minimize the district’s need for expensive infrastructure. Even better, it would give it the flexibility to adapt to technologies like artificial intelligence, which would require substantial IT resources.

That city facility, still there today, is no longer home to the old ISP servers. Instead, 95% of the district’s applications are hosted in Microsoft Azure, while the remainder live in a Scale Computing cluster housed on a rack in the high school’s data closet.

CDW, led by Wonson, structured the migration in waves. The process was streamlined through automation tools, and it included the simultaneous technical implementation of firewalls and other security features.

“When you’re in the cloud, the cloud service provider handles security of the data center infrastructure, but it’s up to the school to protect its virtual machines, applications and databases,” Wonson explains. This shared security model sometimes takes districts by surprise, he adds. “We always spend time focused on those details so they’re aware of their responsibilities and have the right security tools and practices in place.”

Indianapolis Public Schools: By the Numbers

31,000

Students

53

Elementary schools, 6 middle schools, 11 high schools

3,200

Teachers and staff

36

Unique school programs

48

Special education and alternative education programs

Indianapolis Public Schools By the Numbers

31,000

Students

53

Elementary schools, 6 middle schools, 11 high schools

3,200

Teachers and staff

36

Unique school programs

48

Special education and alternative education programs

Equipped for a Sustainable Present and Future

Today, IPS could serve as a model for other K–12 districts with cloud ambitions. The organization successfully completed its migration before students returned from summer break, and it is now seeing the benefits of its technological evolution.

The district has become “more agile,” Allen notes. Teachers can more easily access instructional resources that allow them to personalize student learning with a few clicks on any network-connected device.

IPS has also reaped rewards on the IT management front. The district’s technologists no longer worry about tinkering with a decaying fleet of vulnerable servers. Instead, they get to focus on people-centric things, such as teacher and classroom support. If an instructor is interested in trying a new app, it’s easy for the team to onboard the required resources. And thanks to the district’s cloud backups, the risk of data being lost is greatly reduced.

In fact, Allen says, in measures of sustainability and resiliency, “we’re much better off now that we’re in the cloud than we ever were when our data center was on-premises.” The district, she adds, now has what it needs to deliver on the promise of rebuilding stronger.

“It’s a great time to be a part of IPS,” Allen says. “You can feel the mobility and the energy — the sense that we’re really moving forward.”