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Event

Windows Cloud in Higher Education: The Outcomes That Matter

November 17, 2026
9:00 AM

Microsoft Paddington

2 Kingdom Street, London, W2 6BD

40 Days 13 Hours 12 Minutes

Reserve your place

About the event

A half-day briefing for CIOs, CTOs, CISOs and IT leaders across UK higher education. Hosted by Nerdio, Microsoft and Softcat. 

Why attend

You’ll hear directly from university IT leaders who are dealing with these decisions themselves, alongside Microsoft, Nerdio and Softcat. The questions we'll be looking to answer:

  • What replaces Azure Lab Services, and what do we need to do now? The main options on the table, and how to plan the move before Azure Lab Services retires in June 2027
  • How do we give every student the same experience, wherever they are working? Digital equality in practice: giving every student the same access to applications and computing power, whether they are on campus or at home, on a university machine or their own device, on a well-funded course or not
  • How do we support high-performance teaching and research without buying more specialist hardware? Making GPU and compute-heavy workloads available on demand, without every department building and funding its own environment
  • How are universities thinking about desktop security as AI use grows? What needs to change in desktop security, identity and access as staff and students bring AI tools into everyday work
  • Can we reduce endpoint cost and support sustainability goals at the same time? Extending device life, lowering hardware requirements and what cloud-hosted desktops contribute to both the budget and the carbon footprint
  • Can the same approach work beyond teaching and research? Where the same model fits professional and administrative services, and what changes when you extend it across the whole institution

Event location

Microsoft Paddington

2 Kingdom Street, London, W2 6BD

Speakers

Jen Wyatt

Jen Wyatt

Director of Higher Education, Microsoft

James Crossland

James Crossland

Head of Workplace IT Operations, University of Leeds

Jack Lewis

Jack Lewis

Chief Technologist - Workspace, Softcat

Gavin Connolly

Gavin Connolly

Field CTO, Nerdio

Sean Corrigan

Sean Corrigan

Sales Engineer, Nerdio

Ryan Payton

Ryan Payton

Research Tech Strategist, Microsoft

Connor Roebuck

Connor Roebuck

Senior Technology Strategist, Microsoft

Richard Paterson

Richard Paterson

Enterprise Account Executive, Nerdio

Event agenda

Time Description
9:00 AM

Registration and coffee

9:40 AM

Keynote: Jen Wyatt, Director of Higher Education, Microsoft 

10:00 - 11:45 AM

Six outcome briefings, including a session from the University of Leeds 

12:05 PM

Softcat on delivering the modernisation journey

12:25 PM

Panel: Microsoft, Nerdio, Softcat, Leeds, and UWE 

13:00 PM

Lunch and networking

Hosted by



Space is limited to keep the room focused, so please register early. 

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