Case Study: Hyde County School System achieves 50% cost savings and worry-free data protection with SAS' North Carolina Education Cloud

Moving to the cloud saves money and worry for coastal school district

Hyde County Schools, a small coastal North Carolina district of 576 students, faced replacing an aging AS/400 after previously losing a server to a hurricane. With rising maintenance fees (over $6,000/year), a projected $50,000 replacement cost, annual tape expenses and 160 overtime hours for backups, the district needed a more secure, cost‑effective, weather‑resilient solution.

Hyde migrated over a weekend to the North Carolina Education Cloud hosted by SAS, gaining 24/7 monitored servers, encrypted off‑site nightly backups, IBM hardware/OS maintenance, help‑desk support and secure VPN access with no learning curve. The move eliminated tape backups and overtime, preserved local control over access, and cut costs—typical LEAs save about 50%—while providing stronger disaster recovery and peace of mind.

Hyde County School System

Ken Chilcoat

Finance Officer