Budget Ideas

[staningrimsby]

Hi Guys,

I have just been told that on the1^st April I will receive a budget of around £34K, there is also acertain amount to carry over from this financial year but I don’t know how muchat the moment.

The budget I will receive is tocover all hardware purchases any networking that needs to be done, any IT SLA’sthat need to be taken out as well as any OS related licences that may berequired

Good Points

· We have around 615 pupils in the school.

· There are 4 network cabs in the school each withCisco Gig switches in.

· All staff with the exception of 5 have laptopsthat are less than 2 years old.

· The KS1 IT Suite is only 2 years old and consistsof 25 pc’s.

· All classrooms have had new projectors installedwhich are guaranteed for 3 years

· The DC is less than a year old

· The Finance server is brand new

· We have 75 iPod’s and around 25 iPad’s

Bad Points

· The KS2 IT Suite consists of 30 pc’s that arearound 6 years old and desperate to be replaced.

· The laptop trolley is also out of warranty andconsists of 30 Dell Latitude D531’s

· The wireless infrastructure is appalling andconsists of around 20 En-Genius wireless-G AP’s

I currently do not have any SLA’swith anyone although with the Local Authority no longer supporting any of ourschools I will have to arrange Web Filtering and AV, I am also looking into theEES licence and would be interested if anyone could tell me if this also coversMicrosoft’s AV solution ??

Sadly the budget will not allowme to replace all the bad points, cover the AV, EES and Web Filtering solutionsand still leave money left to cover the rest of the year.

I have trialled the ruckussolution and on the older laptops it did not perform very well at all but thenewer one seemed to work fine. I am looking into upgrading the laptops in thetrolley for now with the aid of an extra 2GB RAM, SSD drives and new wireless-NWIFI adaptors, that will take around £3K of the budget off me but willhopefully prolong the life of the laptops until next financial year when I canbudget to replace them and re-locate the existing ones. This may then allow meto replace the wireless solution as well.

What do you guys think what areyou experiences as I have never been in charge of a budget before.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

Hi Stan,

 

Just about to drop you a PM with some ideas for the laptops and for your IT suite.

 

We can help you maximise your spend.