Sims Discover or Medal of Honour?

I repeat, this is a field trial; we have a period of optimisation work before release and the requirement will almost certainly come down. Say what you like about our coders but I have absolute respect for the Discover team, I know them all well and what they are producing is 1st class. I've shown the software to ASCL groups and they have all been very excited and indeed our field trial was over subscribed by a factor of 3. It would be nice if you could remember that our staff are real people trying to produce products that will make a difference rather than dismissing their efforts before you have even seen them.

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Originally Posted by CyberNerd

er no.
Capita have an 80% share of a MIS market which "over the 5 year lifetime the costs to schools of MIS licensing, maintenance and support is likely to exceed
£550 million at 2009/10 prices." They shouldn't be able to get away with it. Especially considering procurement is "uncompetitive as a result of a virtual absence of Open Journal of the European Union (OJEU) compliant procurement activity"

Becta Local authorities - Procurement - Infrastructure - School MIS and value for money report 2010

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Originally Posted by pcstru

Yes and no.

Yes it is reasonable to expect them to appear. But that also means any reasonable development process will seek to identify and eliminate them as part of the quality process. The description of something relatively trivial as "requiring massive amounts of processing" simply helps to set the quality bar low, excusing poor practice by citing specious causes.

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I agree, i was just encouraging debate. Nice quote cybernerd, where on earth did you dig up that article? ;)

I would put Capita 5yr income from SIMS core (ie no guff) at more like £87 million.

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Originally Posted by j17sparky

Brilliant, I get to tell SMT that not one of our PCs will be up to running SIMS, even the 100 we bought only 3 months ago. 4gb of RAM, are you kidding me? The SQL server isn't even using 4gb so why on earth would a workstation use it. Maybe the govt. should be looking at Capita in its budget cuts?...

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Are you a primary? Secondary - the hardware clearly recommends 4gb for the SIMS server. RAM and a graphics card for desktop is what, under £100, so say, head of departments + SLT = £2k? What you would spend on a new software package, only this time you spend it on hardware, something you can actually point at and touch rather then a piece of paper.

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Originally Posted by matt40k

I would put Capita 5yr income from SIMS core (ie no guff) at more like £87 million. Are you a primary? Secondary - the hardware clearly recommends 4gb for the SIMS server. RAM and a graphics card for desktop is what, under £100, so say, head of departments + SLT = £2k? What you would spend on a new software package, only this time you spend it on hardware, something you can actually point at and touch rather then a piece of paper.

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:confused: I was comparing the servers memory usage to that of the workstation, not stating that we can't afford 4gb of ram in the server. £2k is £2k regardless of whether it is "something you can actually point at", times that £2k by the number of schools in the country...

£2k is just a upper limit IMO. At the end of the day, it's like 3rd gen games, you either investigate in the hardware or you stick with 2nd gen games, it's the same with Win7\XP.

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Originally Posted by j17sparky

Brilliant, I get to tell SMT that not one of our PCs will be up to running SIMS, even the 100 we bought only 3 months ago. 4gb of RAM, are you kidding me? The SQL server isn't even using 4gb so why on earth would a workstation use it. Maybe the govt. should be looking at Capita in its budget cuts?...

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SIMS Discover, not SIMS. I suspect it's to do with the graphics as much as anything else and the requirements aren't finalised yet.

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Originally Posted by jamesb

SIMS Discover, not SIMS. I suspect it's to do with the graphics as much as anything else and the requirements aren't finalised yet.

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Well said James. The Field Trial schools have not even started to test it yet. Those jumping to conclusions maybe ought to chill out a little and wait for us to get our hands on the software in a school environment!

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Originally Posted by jamesb

SIMS Discover, not SIMS. I suspect it's to do with the graphics as much as anything else and the requirements aren't finalised yet.

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Originally Posted by Sivadam

Well said James. The Field Trial schools have not even started to test it yet. Those jumping to conclusions maybe ought to chill out a little and wait for us to get our hands on the software in a school environment!

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Exactly. Isn't it worth the money to upgrade a few PCs if it gives you 'Minority Report' style funk. The proof of concept at #BETT2010 was pretty cool.