mowgli82 Posted September 28, 2015 Posted September 28, 2015 Is anyone using SIMS hosted solution? I would be interested in your experiences in terms of speed etc is it better than the SLG hosted solution?. Thanks
matt40k Posted September 28, 2015 Posted September 28, 2015 Are you talking about the new Capita offering, SIMS hosted in Azure? Or hosted option a few LAs do? Also primary or secondary? The latter will be more complex so more prone to problems.
mowgli82 Posted September 28, 2015 Author Posted September 28, 2015 Primary, I wasn't aware there are two options. I think its the Azure one.
matt40k Posted September 29, 2015 Posted September 29, 2015 Sure @PhilNeal can point you in the direction of a few schools - I'd be surprised if you'll have many\any on here, as its a techy forum and generally you outsource your techy problems if you don't have any techy in-house
mowgli82 Posted September 29, 2015 Author Posted September 29, 2015 its not really a problem, I see it as a easy way to give staff access to SIMS/FMS from home without going down the SLG approach.
edutech4schools Posted September 29, 2015 Posted September 29, 2015 its not really a problem, I see it as a easy way to give staff access to SIMS/FMS from home without going down the SLG approach. We dont have SLG but all staff can use Sims from home using remote server access.
mowgli82 Posted September 29, 2015 Author Posted September 29, 2015 We dont have SLG but all staff can use Sims from home using remote server access. Here that would involve getting staff to install VPN software on their home machines and giving them instructions whereas with a hosted solution they pop to a website and logon - bobs your uncle.
localzuk Posted September 29, 2015 Posted September 29, 2015 Here that would involve getting staff to install VPN software on their home machines and giving them instructions whereas with a hosted solution they pop to a website and logon - bobs your uncle. You don't need a VPN to do this. Running Remote Desktop Web Access with RD Gateway does the same job as hosted - they go to a website. Even works on iPad if you use the Remote Desktop Client app...
hardtailstar Posted September 29, 2015 Posted September 29, 2015 At a school I've worked in it was run by the LA via their IT services and it had nothing but problems. There was support calls almost daily. But this could have just been down to the LA IT services being rubbish IMO. Although having said that the major issues I had with them was for the hosted SIMS
edutech4schools Posted September 29, 2015 Posted September 29, 2015 I look after 4 schools on my own and have had no problems with remote desktop access or apps. Its been very very solid at all my schools for many years
PhilNeal Posted September 29, 2015 Posted September 29, 2015 If you'd like to email me I would be happy to link you to some schools that are using it. [email protected]
PhilNeal Posted October 7, 2015 Posted October 7, 2015 I think it's Primary £500 for 10 users Secondary £1500 for 30 users. Additional users £30
Griff Posted October 8, 2015 Posted October 8, 2015 I think it's Primary £500 for 10 users Secondary £1500 for 30 users. Additional users £30 cripes!
drewp Posted December 11, 2015 Posted December 11, 2015 We migrated our 3 SIMS/FMS users to the Azure Hosted SIMS in Sept 2015. Costing is very attractive, also having Capita’s support team looking after the system, updates etc. swayed us to make the move. We did have problems with the migration, things like email settings to allow BACS payment advices to be sent, which meant the BACS processes took around 45 minutes to complete - @PhilNeal helped get these problems sorted out for us. I get lost of grumbles about the performance from all 3 of our SIMS/FMS users, putting in invoices takes a long time etc. SIMS/FMS all runs in an RDP session and we see lot of "not responding" and the SQL mouse pointer showing up etc. As its a RemoteApp session provided by the server in the Azure platform wouldn't that be where the problem lies? At the moment Capita's support team are hinting that is a problem with our desktops, internet connection, proxy/filtering. We get the same sort of speeds during half terms when there is less load on our proxy/filtering/leased line. Anyone else using hosted SIMS on Azure and having performance problems? 1
Steve21 Posted December 11, 2015 Posted December 11, 2015 (edited) @PhilNeal Silly question, does the HOSTED aspect mean you can dump all the support/other fees? As it's all included? Or do you still need the support contracts on top of the hosting fees? Do you still pay the module fees e.g Lesson Monitor/Photo Import? Steve Edited December 11, 2015 by Steve21
drewp Posted December 11, 2015 Posted December 11, 2015 You still need to pay the other support/other fees. Going Hosted saved us the cost for a new server and the onsite consultancy charge for the work... We use iSAMS for as our MIS and are only using FMS for invoicing. Perhaps I should not say this but, our Accounts team wish we had not made the change... 1
Steve21 Posted December 11, 2015 Posted December 11, 2015 You still need to pay the other support/other fees. Going Hosted saved us the cost for a new server and the onsite consultancy charge for the work... We use iSAMS for as our MIS and are only using FMS for invoicing. Perhaps I should not say this but, our Accounts team wish we had not made the change... Thing is though if you're paying (for us at least it would be) about £4k a year to host it, while we have it virtualised already. Even with a new migration we're looking to do that's £700 from Capita. Then paying the support on top, can't really see the benefit of it :s Unless it's more the non-virtualised setups. Steve
drewp Posted December 11, 2015 Posted December 11, 2015 The hosting cost for us is £500 as we only have the 3 users. The cost we had quoted for the 1-day consulting to install SOLUS3/SQL 2014 and migrating SIMS FMS and Earnie to a new server was more than your £700! For us, we could have it hosted for multiple years, have the system offsite and have Capita's support team handling all the updates. It’s just the performance that we are seeing with the hosted system that is the negative for us…
Steve21 Posted December 11, 2015 Posted December 11, 2015 The hosting cost for us is £500 as we only have the 3 users. The cost we had quoted for the 1-day consulting to install SOLUS3/SQL 2014 and migrating SIMS FMS and Earnie to a new server was more than your £700! For us, we could have it hosted for multiple years, have the system offsite and have Capita's support team handling all the updates. It’s just the performance that we are seeing with the hosted system that is the negative for us… Strange Actually less than 700 for us the quote was, but rounded haha. And that's for secondary school, 100+ users etc Ah well, If it's all working good that's good (once performance fixed), was just wondering/assuming the support might be included so could save £5k a year there haha Steve
matt40k Posted December 13, 2015 Posted December 13, 2015 Wishful thinking there Steve If you've got a solid server farm\virtual environment, yer, not very good idea as its just another server. If you haven't makes complete sense. So primary school or a cloud-based school where local servers are really not much more then DNS, DHCP and caching, hosting makes a lot of sense over spending £££ on a server, then another £££ getting offsite backups and then more £££ on support contracts. I suspect more schools will look at it when Microsoft opens the UK data centre, I know the prospect of hosting sensitive data outside of the UK, even still in the EU, is a bit daunting. Just keep in mind all these bolt-ons add up, this is especially true if the reason your with your MIS supplier (ie Capita SIMS) is because its cheap. Equally if you selected them because all the data is on prem! (Oh and for goodness sake don't say its because of your LA!! Every LA is on record as saying its the school choice of which MIS they use, its entirely on them and they will not block it - they will only recommend) 1
Steve21 Posted December 13, 2015 Posted December 13, 2015 Aye Matt Always nice if saving moneys an option hey haha That's cool though, thought it might not but keep getting asked it by our SLT and can't see any benefit (When Virtual/RDS already) so thought I'd check Aye certainly see the benefits for the smaller schools as you said, as takes a huge chunk off them internally. Will be interesting to see how SIMs goes in the future as to whether it's gonna be web-based so even needed in regards to HOSTed etc. Just seems with the apps all coming out (Teachers App/Emerge etc etc) seems silly to support things in so many routes than just one webpage. Obviously yes a lot of work etc but time will tell Steve
PhilNeal Posted December 13, 2015 Posted December 13, 2015 @drewp - the hosted performance is normally reported as better than local. I assume you've reported it/checked out the bandwidth into the school?
GREED Posted January 13, 2016 Posted January 13, 2016 Just seems with the apps all coming out (Teachers App/Emerge etc etc) seems silly to support things in so many routes than just one webpage Working offline/without internet/without servers/in emergency?
Steve21 Posted January 13, 2016 Posted January 13, 2016 Working offline/without internet/without servers/in emergency? HTML5 cache/local server hosting etc? But I meant the fact that as more and more people are using things that "base" SIMs won't work on, it makes sense to direct the product in a multi-platform way rather than have millions of side options Steve
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