Life after BSF...... what would you do about hardware replacement?

[m25man]

As a BPOS and 365 reseller and user myself I not only get the benefits but do so for free so I cant be too critical of it, for SME's and startups the zero capital outlay is what always eventually gets them onboard and austerity measures are sure to get more people looking towards cloud based services.
Sage Accounts is now available in the cloud and I expect to see more and more.

It seems to me that the OP and others in the same boat will eventually be faced with no other option other than to join the cloud set or be banished to the wilderness of core2duo forever

Of the three options given I would probably go for #3 as thats what the men in shiny suits that kicked it all off in the first place will all be doing.

[dwhyte85]

As a BPOS and 365 reseller and user myself I not only get the benefits but do so for free so I cant be too critical of it, for SME's and startups the zero capital outlay is what always eventually gets them onboard and austerity measures are sure to get more people looking towards cloud based services.
Sage Accounts is now available in the cloud and I expect to see more and more.

It seems to me that the OP and others in the same boat will eventually be faced with no other option other than to join the cloud set or be banished to the wilderness of core2duo forever

Of the three options given I would probably go for #3 as thats what the men in shiny suits that kicked it all off in the first place will all be doing.

From a perspective of... how things run in a school, I guess the benefit could be that no capital purchasing means no outlay every 5 years (whatever the policy is) - overall I could see it saving £££. You could run these C2D/i3 machines forever if they connect up for central processing.

Could be the long bye bye for the network manager and hello 1 technician/coordinator

Considering the otherside of an inhouse tech, yes you may get something fixed quickly... the otherside of it is you may not! It's hard for a school to assess capability and until a disaster they won't truly know.

Glad I escaped education, can't see much good coming of the current BSF molestation and post-BSF doesn't look to promising for staffing - either they support ancient kit for a long time or they move towards outsourced IT services, it may well be a good thing for the teaching and learning though based on the skillset of some of the IT tech/network managers I've come across.

[jimmy_2k]

Schools aren't allowed to save more than a small percentage of their funding each year. If they save any more than that amount, it is taken back (I think it is 5%).

To the OP: We are actually in the situation you describe. The school was a BSF school, managed service and all. The MSP pulled out of the contract and we now have 3 year old equipment so are trying to plan for that '5 year' mark. Until then, we're tiding over with memory upgrades and migrating to Windows 7 etc...

After then, there is a high possibility that we will go down some form of desktop virtualisation route. The thing is, our building is only 3 years old, yet they put Cat5e in, 100Mbit switches etc... And if we want any cabling done, we have to do it through the building owner at a high cost.

So, for us, the school is going to have to make the best use of what we have for as long as we have, unless someone comes along and hands us a large chunk of capital to spend again.

I also discussed leasing with our business manager and it seems like an ideal solution until you start hearing things like 'falling rolls' and 'funding uncertainty'. So, if we were to sign up to a leasing agreement, we'd end up having a fixed cost for our IT provision, with the potential that our funding won't be fixed.

Somehow, we have to combine this with a desire for more mobile devices within the school.

I'm in a similar situaton and my kit hits the 5 year mark in July when all warranties expire. Currently planning our future for the next 5 years but until 2013 I think we will keep everything going as it is and by then we will know what monies are available and be able to start enacting our development plan.