Paul Queeney: From Council Estate to Cloud-First Classrooms 

An ad in a local paper, followed by university as a mature-age student, launched Paul Queeney from his council estate upbringing in northern England onto a remarkable global adventure. With technology as his constant companion, Paul has worked across double-digit countries, from Moscow to Hong Kong, before making Australia and IT his home. Now at the helm of tech solutions for education at Trinity Grammar, he's truly a game-changer.

From Council Estate to Cloud-First Classrooms

Paul's adventurous career has seen him live and work in an impressive double-digit number of countries, including Ireland, Hong Kong, Moscow, and various Western European nations. This extensive global experience has been consistently linked by his passion for technology, which he describes as the "common thread" in his life. 

Paul's move to Australia was serendipitous, prompted by a recruiter contact from a former colleague that led him to Coopers and Lybrand (which became PwC). Then, around 2010, another unexpected opportunity arose when a friend asked him to run a technology project in the education sector. Despite his initial unfamiliarity with education, Paul took on the freelance contract with the Association of Independent Schools of NSW. This led to an 8-9 year tenure, providing him with the "immense privilege" of working with a massive variety of schools across diverse faiths, cultures, and sizes, helping them integrate technology.

Transforming Education with Logicalis and Microsoft Azure

Now as the Head of ICT at Trinity Grammar since 2018, Paul has spearheaded a significant digital transformation. Facing the cycle of replacing on-premise computing infrastructure, he led the decision to take a "leap" and migrate all servers and storage to Microsoft Azure cloud.

Logicalis played a crucial role, initially assisting with a niche budgeting system in 2021, which built trust and led to their partnership on the strategic cloud migration in 2022. Logicalis helped lay out cost implications, risks, and benefits, leading to a successful execution in the first six months of 2024, moving everything "out of the cupboard in the corner and put it into the cloud."

This migration has brought tangible benefits, particularly for remote learning capabilities. Paul highlights how the pandemic forced them to "invent a lot of things on the fly," leading to the successful deployment of Microsoft Teams for remote learning. This experience then informed their innovative Field Studies Programme for Year 9 students, where they deploy the same cloud-based tools to curate student experiences on school-provided devices, allowing for controlled communication with parents.

Watch Paul Queeney shares more about his journey as a Game Changer.