MarkCronin Posted February 9, 2014 Posted February 9, 2014 Hi All, Just a question to see how many schools are actually sticking with the managed service provided from the BSF service provider once your initial (5 years?) contract is up? Are you happy with the service? Are you renewing? Are you looking elsewhere? Be very interested in hearing peoples thoughts / stories...
Jonah Posted February 10, 2014 Posted February 10, 2014 We were part of Wave 1 in the North West and the contracts expired in September 2012. Every school within Wave 1 did not renew with the then MSP (Capita). As you can probably guess, not many schools were happy with the contract at all! We were the only school to come fully back in house. 3 that I am aware of went back in house but with some 3rd party support and the remainder entered a new Managed Service with a different provider.
jimmy_2k Posted February 13, 2014 Posted February 13, 2014 Here in Bristol all schools which were in the Wave 1 managed service went in house. Some schools are in a large federation of academies which decided to do their own managed service between schools.
maark Posted January 3, 2017 Posted January 3, 2017 Help required - have tried google but resurrecting old thread - I have been asked to draw up a transition plan to move away from capita managed service to in-house service. Has anyone got a plan they can share? Have drawn up one but the college want more detail. Also attached plan if anyone has time to comment on it. Not sure what else I can put in - I won't get access to some systems until the actual changeover. Any help much appreciated. MarkIT Transition plan for moving from capita managed system3.docx
Guest MD5T Posted January 3, 2017 Posted January 3, 2017 Help required - have tried google but resurrecting old thread - I have been asked to draw up a transition plan to move away from capita managed service to in-house service. Has anyone got a plan they can share? Have drawn up one but the college want more detail. Also attached plan if anyone has time to comment on it. Not sure what else I can put in - I won't get access to some systems until the actual changeover. Any help much appreciated. Mark Have you thought about costs implications to this?
mullet_man Posted January 3, 2017 Posted January 3, 2017 Costs Warranties on equipment Is there a reason you can't use Capita for the 3rd line support, they know the network and would make sense for at least a year or 2 while you complete the transition away. 1
maark Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 warranties I need to add in. Costs - I am already employed by school - i can get quote for capita extended support contract but guessing it will be expensive. Should be able to manage it all in-house - that's what i have done at previous schools..
mullet_man Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 It's worth getting a quote, I think you can get it by the number of the calls and support days so if you went for the minimum it's keeping the costs down. There's always unknowns so personally I wouldn't want to totally cut the ties just in case. But that's personal opinion. Good luck with everything it looks like you've got everything covered. 1
jimmy_2k Posted February 7, 2018 Posted February 7, 2018 As its a year on, just out of curiosity how did it all go? are you fully in house?
maark Posted February 8, 2018 Posted February 8, 2018 Everything in-house but I have extended support (rather than fully managed) with capita because the school wanted to be on the safe side. I have hardly used it so will see when it comes to renewing it. Things running fine - gradually simplifying the overly complex capita AD and Group policies.
mullet_man Posted February 8, 2018 Posted February 8, 2018 Everything in-house but I have extended support (rather than fully managed) with capita because the school wanted to be on the safe side. I have hardly used it so will see when it comes to renewing it. Things running fine - gradually simplifying the overly complex capita AD and Group policies. We have done the same here with support, we've now replaced servers (due to old ones being out of warranty and HP wanting a small fortune to extend the warranty for 1 year) We are currently finding it hard to work out a plan to replace devices that are all out of warranty and 5 year old, we obviously don't have the money required to replace everything in one go.
PotNoodleTech Posted February 9, 2018 Posted February 9, 2018 We have done the same here with support, we've now replaced servers (due to old ones being out of warranty and HP wanting a small fortune to extend the warranty for 1 year) We are currently finding it hard to work out a plan to replace devices that are all out of warranty and 5 year old, we obviously don't have the money required to replace everything in one go. * Firstly, ask your self "do they need replacing"? Or can they be upgraded? A £35 128GB SSD drive can make a massive difference to the usability of a 5 year old PC or Laptop and can postpone the "need to replace" for several years. * Secondly, prioritise based on usage. You could prioritise teacher desktops first as they are expected to demonstrate to the class effectively all day long every day whilst also doing things like marking registers in a timely manner. Having a teacher wait 10 minutes to get into the software they need is a big waste of time (and money, if you factor in each teachers wage 10 minutes) in a 55 minute lesson. You could then prioritise high use IT areas that need a bit of grunt such as DT/ICT/ART/MUSIC and leave the outlying IT rooms that are more often than not used for ad hoc web browsing till last. * Thirdly, minimise the number of mobile devices you use. They are expensive to buy, expensive to run, expensive to support, and a thigh risk of damage/loss/theft.
mullet_man Posted February 13, 2018 Posted February 13, 2018 * Firstly, ask your self "do they need replacing"? Or can they be upgraded? A £35 128GB SSD drive can make a massive difference to the usability of a 5 year old PC or Laptop and can postpone the "need to replace" for several years. * Secondly, prioritise based on usage. You could prioritise teacher desktops first as they are expected to demonstrate to the class effectively all day long every day whilst also doing things like marking registers in a timely manner. Having a teacher wait 10 minutes to get into the software they need is a big waste of time (and money, if you factor in each teachers wage 10 minutes) in a 55 minute lesson. You could then prioritise high use IT areas that need a bit of grunt such as DT/ICT/ART/MUSIC and leave the outlying IT rooms that are more often than not used for ad hoc web browsing till last. * Thirdly, minimise the number of mobile devices you use. They are expensive to buy, expensive to run, expensive to support, and a thigh risk of damage/loss/theft. Thanks AButters - some great pointers thanks for that. We are looking at extending the devices but our devices are a mixture of Dell 5520s/Tosh netbooks and the Dell's are breaking daily due to their very rubbish hinge design. We'd also require new batteries as 5 year old batteries are not holding their charge very well as you'd expect. So your probably looking at around a 100+ investment on a 5 year old piece of kit, not sure if thats something we'd look to do. The netbooks are useless and an SSD when I tested made no speed difference, Atom processors and 2GB of RAM! Shockingly slow. Am going to let the powers that be decide where the priorities lie, we have sorted out IT rooms with PCs (originally they used laptops) and replace teacher laptops so it's mostly student devices that needs looking at. Ideally yeah I'd love to get more PC rooms than laptops, originally everything was laptops/netbooks throughout the building - they made some bad decisions with BSF, all before my time I should add. Thanks again! 1
PotNoodleTech Posted February 14, 2018 Posted February 14, 2018 (edited) The netbooks are useless and an SSD when I tested made no speed difference, Atom processors and 2GB of RAM! Shockingly slow. I am trailing Neverware Cloudready on some old atom 2gb netbooks. It basically wipes windows, and turns them into a chromebook. Results so far look promising! Edited February 14, 2018 by PotNoodleTech
jimmy_2k Posted February 21, 2018 Posted February 21, 2018 @maark @mullet_man. Was the AD domain a single domain across schools or was it a different in each school?
mullet_man Posted February 21, 2018 Posted February 21, 2018 I am trailing Neverware Cloudready on some old atom 2gb netbooks. It basically wipes windows, and turns them into a chromebook. Results so far look promising! Is a chrome book any good if you use O365? Obviously students save on the network so won’t be able to log on etc?
mullet_man Posted February 21, 2018 Posted February 21, 2018 @maark @mullet_man. Was the AD domain a single domain across schools or was it a different in each school? Yes we were a single domain across a few schools but we are all now our own domain.
Paid_Peanuts Posted February 21, 2018 Posted February 21, 2018 Is a chrome book any good if you use O365? Obviously students save on the network so won’t be able to log on etc? Neverware basically do the same thing but instead of all the integration with Google, they do an Office 365 version! So you can boot it similar to a Chromebook but instead of Google Docs, Sheets, Drive etc. You get all the shortcuts to all the Microsoft O365 equivalents.
jimmy_2k Posted February 22, 2018 Posted February 22, 2018 Yes we were a single domain across a few schools but we are all now our own domain. Did the MSP set that up or did you all have to build the replacements? I created a replacement for my school
maark Posted February 22, 2018 Posted February 22, 2018 there was a single domain across schools - capita at some stage isolated each school but we are left with two higher level DCs that we can't get rid of above our main DCs that are in the child domain
jimmy_2k Posted February 22, 2018 Posted February 22, 2018 there was a single domain across schools - capita at some stage isolated each school but we are left with two higher level DCs that we can't get rid of above our main DCs that are in the child domain Yeah, that's what I had. It worked ok for about 6 months and then suddenly every Monday at 10am without any error logs the DCs would all crash and everything just stopped working. In the end all affected schools started again and had no problems since.
maark Posted February 22, 2018 Posted February 22, 2018 Yeah, that's what I had. It worked ok for about 6 months and then suddenly every Monday at 10am without any error logs the DCs would all crash and everything just stopped working. In the end all affected schools started again and had no problems since. when you say started again you mean fresh domain?
jimmy_2k Posted February 22, 2018 Posted February 22, 2018 (edited) Yes that's correct, I built a new domain which was based on two domain controllers, down from 2 root and 2 school ones. I also rebuilt all of the Windows servers gradually in the same year as the current ones were running Server 2003 and I migrated to Server 2008R2. So in the end we had a totally new system software wise. Edited February 22, 2018 by jimmy_2k
maark Posted February 22, 2018 Posted February 22, 2018 Yes that's correct, I built a new domain which was based on two domain controllers, down from 2 root and 2 school ones. I also rebuilt all of the Windows servers gradually in the same year as the current ones were running Server 2003 and I migrated to Server 2008R2. So in the end we had a totally new system software wise. It would be a good idea to do this but i don't think it is practical for us at the moment. Things are working pretty well and we have a lot of interconnected systems by the time you add in everything - sims,printers,cashless, azure connect etc etc. I am gradually simplifying and disabling a lot of the overly complex stuff in place - nearly all on windows 10 and will start moving from server 2012 to 2016. Have just upgraded sccm to latest version on 2016.
jimmy_2k Posted February 27, 2018 Posted February 27, 2018 It would be a good idea to do this but i don't think it is practical for us at the moment. Things are working pretty well and we have a lot of interconnected systems by the time you add in everything - sims,printers,cashless, azure connect etc etc. I am gradually simplifying and disabling a lot of the overly complex stuff in place - nearly all on windows 10 and will start moving from server 2012 to 2016. Have just upgraded sccm to latest version on 2016. If it's not broke don't fix it. It is a hell of a job to do and to be honest I wouldn't have done it if it had all been working properly. It was a good experience though. At my current school I have been thinking about doing it, but the current system works well and has been upgraded to 2012R2 functional level, its just the name I don't like
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