Over 1000 schools in Northern Ireland will receive their own education cloud courtesy of IT service providers.

A £170m five-year contract has been awarded to Northgate Managed Services to provide the Education cloud to schools, including related services such as the wide area network, local area network and telecoms, via the subcontractor Eircom.

The cloud will enable 24/7 access to resources from a variety of devices such as smartphones, iPads, tablets and laptops with superfast connectivity with up to 200MB of bandwidth courtesy of Eircom.

According to Jimmy Stewart, director at the organisation that supports Northern Ireland schools' IT infrastructures, C2k the new education cloud will "deliver technology-driven learning environments and incorporate the latest innovations in technology.”