TES: IT Company Accused Of 'Excessive' Profits

[DaveP]

Link: IT company accused of 'excessive' profits - News - TES Connect

The same article in Friday's paper had slightly different content:

...Due to Capita Children's Services' strong standing in the school market place it would be seen as using its position unfairly against its competitors if it did not pass these costs on to its customers...

[nephilim]

Not exactly wrong are they...the article is apt to say the least!

[sparkeh]

Capita profiteering? Quelle Surprise!

When Microsoft and Adobe are on the other side of the re-licensing issue, something has to be wrong.

[webman]

Hopefully this will pave the way for greater competition in the MIS market, allowing other providers to offer cheaper and better services and products.

[sparkeh]

Hopefully this will pave the way for greater competition in the MIS market, allowing other providers to offer cheaper and better services and products.

Well the dollar signs might have some effect?

RM, a competitor to Capita, said it does not charge schools that convert to academy status for new licences and has seen more business as a result of Capita’s decision.

[farquea]

we are moving to an Academy in September and had someone in from Capita to talk us through the transfer process. Basically while not really knowing what she was talking about, we were told to just change our DFE number and school name would incur a transfer feee in the thousands. When this point was argued by our school bursar the saleswoman conveniently found some papers which said something that meant maybe we didnt have to pay the fee and would get back to us. Complete joke of a company, software is something i've seen university students produce better, the amount of updates and patches stuck on top is daft and so many simple bugs in it.

[pcstru]

Due to Capita Children’s Services’ strong standing in the school marketplace it would be seen as using its position unfairly against its competitors if it did not pass these costs on to its customers

So it *costs* £20K to issue a new licence? That sounds rather inefficient, even for Capita.

[Edu-IT]

So it *costs* £20K to issue a new licence? That sounds rather inefficient, even for Capita.

Hey! There's going to be a lot of paper shuffling involved. ;-)

[localzuk]

I don't get their argument about competition laws. There is no law stating that a new license for SIMS.net must be at the price level it is at.

There is no law stating that they can't charge a more reasonable licensing fee, when comparing with their competitors.

[pete]

My take on it was the schools who bought via the LA have been getting a cheap deal while not an Academy compared to schools who have their own site license.

[Edu-IT]

My take on it was the schools who bought via the LA have been getting a cheap deal while not an Academy compared to schools who have their own site license.

That is it. Acadamies buy their own 'owned' licence where as schools often use the LA licences. They're not owned by the school.

[localzuk]

That is right, yes, but it still doesn't answer why the licenses are so expensive in the first place. Every other supplier is at least half the price, most even cheaper than that.

[nephilim]

Other suppliers licencing costs come in at roughly £7000...which is a little 1/3 the cost of Capita!

[plexer]

So academies cannot continue using the licence from their LEA paying the LEA a yearly maintenance fee?

Ben

[localzuk]

So academies cannot continue using the licence from their LEA paying the LEA a yearly maintenance fee?

Ben

No, because the LEA can't transfer licenses like that from what I've been told. They can continue to get support from the LEA though.