What is changing?

Beginning at a school’s next contract renewal, but no sooner than 1 August 2024, all school tenants will receive 100TB of free pooled storage across OneDrive, SharePoint, and Exchange, with additional pooled storage per paid user, depending on your subscription *(see the FAQ for details).

Today, most schools (99.96%) are well below their storage allotment. With new tools, all schools can better manage their information and set thoughtful policies for data governance.  Some of the benefits we expect to see include helping schools reduce some of the security risks associated with legacy storage and data sprawl, a top concern for most chief risk officers, while also benefiting our shared environmental footprint.    

Why are we making this change?

Reduce security risk

With the move to the cloud, stored files, data and unused accounts have increased significantly over time, as more and more stored files and data have proliferated without a plan for end-of-life. This is not sustainable from a cost perspective, and it puts education institutions and their students at risk for a data breach. Today, education is the industry most impacted by cybercrime, with K12 receiving  over 80% of workplace malware attacks alone.

Minimize environmental impact

Stored files that are no longer in use, have an impact on our carbon footprint with over half of all data stored by organizations not serving a useful purpose. Storage of this “dark” data takes up space on servers and results in increased electricity consumption, generating 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 alone.1 Microsoft is committed to both the security and privacy of school and student data as well as reducing our collective carbon footprint. Already, our data centres are built with the highest environmental standards in mind. With this change, education customers can help do their part. 

Empower education through innovation

Microsoft’s mission in education is to empower students, faculty and schools to achieve more. To achieve this, Microsoft continues to innovate on new technology, tools, and services. Today, Microsoft provides Microsoft 365 Education suites through free software grants or at significant discounts off commercial pricing. With these new updates we can continue to invest in meaningful innovation while offering those services to more institutions around the world.