14 DAY TRIAL // The United Kingdom’s Department for Education (DfE) has decided to provide 5,000 school employees across the country with Microsoft Surface units, with authorities praising the devices for the possibility of working from anywhere without taking too much space on a desktop.
The DfE will thus adopt Microsoft’s Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 in order to comply with the Efficiency Review, a cost-cutting plan announced in the 2016 Budget supposed to help generate savings up to 3.5 billion pounds from 2019 to 2020.
It goes without saying that both the government and Microsoft praised this investment, with the typical press release statements provided by both sides as part of today’s announcement.
“The Surface Book has been a core part of our mobility and productivity; it’s allowed us to use a device that’s secure in a mobile way. We have also upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and we are able to collaborate, share documents and use the cloud. We haven’t had these benefits before, and now we want to exploit the technology,” Adrian Tucker, Chief Technology Officer at the DfE, explained today.
“The best device”
The UK government says it picked Microsoft’s Surface because it’s the right device for the job, but conspiracy theorists seem to believe that the deal between the two is actually a method to keep Microsoft committed to the British market following the begin of the Brexit.
Prime Minister Theresa May herself visited Microsoft’s headquarters in the country, praising the local operations and the valued collaboration with the software giant at a time when more and more companies are looking into ways to adjust operations in the United Kingdom or to relocate them to other countries.
Microsoft, on the other hand, is doing alright at this point and this new deal with the Department for Education is an important win for the company, as it’s another big customer for the Surface lineup that’s already in use in other government departments and agencies worldwide.