League Table of MIS systems

[Michael]

Something that works doesn't come high on the To-Do list.

 

I agree - Windows 95 still works, but as we all know it's been superseded in pretty much all areas. SIMS is a bit like Windows 95

[matt40k]

Never say never where IT is concerned. When you have everything on site it is under you control, as soon as you start having to rely on a 3rd party service the risk increases, the more that goes to the cloud the greater the risk to business continuity. If someone does damage a cable providing your internet services, how long before service is restored.

 

I've seen so many schools onprem fail its scary. School don't have the money to recruit and retain good IT staff. Don't get me wrong, there are exceptions! But I don't miss the days of sitting in a school asking basic questions and getting worrying answer (like when you last did a backup).

 

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I agree - Windows 95 still works, but as we all know it's been superseded in pretty much all areas. SIMS is a bit like Windows 95

Pretty sure that would still be in use if SIMS would run on it

[matt40k]

Never say never where IT is concerned. When you have everything on site it is under you control, as soon as you start having to rely on a 3rd party service the risk increases, the more that goes to the cloud the greater the risk to business continuity. If someone does damage a cable providing your internet services, how long before service is restored.

 

I've seen so many schools onprem fail its scary. School don't have the money to recruit and retain good IT staff. Don't get me wrong, there are exceptions! But I don't miss the days of sitting in a school asking basic questions and getting worrying answer (like when you last did a backup).

 

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I agree - Windows 95 still works, but as we all know it's been superseded in pretty much all areas. SIMS is a bit like Windows 95

Pretty sure that would still be in use if SIMS would run on it

[MrWrighty]

I've seen so many schools onprem fail its scary. School don't have the money to recruit and retain good IT staff. Don't get me wrong, there are exceptions! But I don't miss the days of sitting in a school asking basic questions and getting worrying answer (like when you last did a backup).Pretty sure that would still be in use if SIMS would run on it

 

Its not just schools, businesses are guilty of this too. I agree, quality IT is expensive buy, run, maintain and good IT personnel critical to its success. The Cloud boys get it wrong as well, ref Amazon AWS servers a few weeks ago, and regarding backups search for the Kings College London fiasco back in December. We are all vulnerable to differing degrees irrespective of the route you take.

[MrWrighty]

I've seen so many schools onprem fail its scary. School don't have the money to recruit and retain good IT staff. Don't get me wrong, there are exceptions! But I don't miss the days of sitting in a school asking basic questions and getting worrying answer (like when you last did a backup).Pretty sure that would still be in use if SIMS would run on it

 

Its not just schools, businesses are guilty of this too. I agree, quality IT is expensive buy, run, maintain and good IT personnel critical to its success. The Cloud boys get it wrong as well, ref Amazon AWS servers a few weeks ago, and regarding backups search for the Kings College London fiasco back in December. We are all vulnerable to differing degrees irrespective of the route you take.

[matt40k]

Its not just schools, businesses are guilty of this too. I agree, quality IT is expensive buy, run, maintain and good IT personnel critical to its success. The Cloud boys get it wrong as well, ref Amazon AWS servers a few weeks ago, and regarding backups search for the Kings College London fiasco back in December. We are all vulnerable to differing degrees irrespective of the route you take.

Very true, but if we take proper managed solution from say Rackspace, you're talking outage, not data loss. Still if you want to make it cost effective you have share the infrastructure (aka public cloud).

Edited March 14, 2017 by matt40k

[matt40k]

Its not just schools, businesses are guilty of this too. I agree, quality IT is expensive buy, run, maintain and good IT personnel critical to its success. The Cloud boys get it wrong as well, ref Amazon AWS servers a few weeks ago, and regarding backups search for the Kings College London fiasco back in December. We are all vulnerable to differing degrees irrespective of the route you take.

Very true, but if we take proper managed solution from say Rackspace, you're talking outage, not data loss. Still if you want to make it cost effective you have share the infrastructure (aka public cloud).

Edited March 14, 2017 by matt40k

[Banjo]

People get very excited about the 'cloud' and appear to loose sight of the fact that its just a means to an end. Take a figurative leaf from the 'Apple Tree' and if it "just works" for the end user, then software platforms and visible masses of condensed watery vapour floating in the atmosphere, are of little concern.

[Banjo]

People get very excited about the 'cloud' and appear to loose sight of the fact that its just a means to an end. Take a figurative leaf from the 'Apple Tree' and if it "just works" for the end user, then software platforms and visible masses of condensed watery vapour floating in the atmosphere, are of little concern.

[matt40k]

The "cloud" revolution is about turning servers into cattle not pets. If hardware fails, you move hardware. Not in months, weeks, days but in seconds. Same is true about services and software. Look what UK gov did when Dyn went down, they moved away to another DNS provider. It's about ending these stupidly long legacy contracts and lock-ins. Yes its a buzzword, but so is WiFi and that was a pretty massive change.

[Bromcom_Marketing]

The "cloud" revolution is about turning servers into cattle not pets. If hardware fails, you move hardware. Not in months, weeks, days but in seconds. Same is true about services and software. Look what UK gov did when Dyn went down, they moved away to another DNS provider. It's about ending these stupidly long legacy contracts and lock-ins. Yes its a buzzword, but so is WiFi and that was a pretty massive change.

 

"It's about ending these stupidly long legacy contracts and lock-ins."

 

Well put - and the damage to the education/schools is immense!

 

Proof of the pudding: 80% of UK market is on legacy MIS software costing £millions more in total cost of ownership and with inconvenience of thick client Windows application on every workstation! And of course denying full all the benefits of true cloud system.

Edited March 14, 2017 by Bromcom_Marketing
Typo

[TechMonkey]

Never say never where IT is concerned. When you have everything on site it is under you control, as soon as you start having to rely on a 3rd party service the risk increases, the more that goes to the cloud the greater the risk to business continuity. If someone does damage a cable providing your internet services, how long before service is restored.

 

Possibly not the place to discuss this but I'd disagree. The 'cloud', if using a proper provider, amplifies business continuity and if your site goes down because a cable is cut then that is an issue with your site not the cloud. Ignoring the need for redundant connections, if the site connection goes down with services in the cloud you have alternative options, tethered internet, working from home, secondary site, etc, whereas if you are locked into on-site only and you lose your connection you are cut off from the world, you are an island. Some functions may be able to carry on but many others will be stopped.

 

Now don't get me wrong, I am not a cloud fan boy & would never say any system is infallible, my site has barely anything in the cloud at the moment, but I think some IT thinking has to change when talking about the cloud and saying it is a risk to business continuity shows a lack of understanding. Can you honestly say that with the resources you have now you can contend with all the resources Microsoft, Amazon, Google or Rackspace can bring to bear? Imagine there is a major Exchange issue, how quick could you sort it compared to how quick the people who work on it day in and day out and possibly had some hand in writing it can solve it? It is the economies of scale.

[scholarpack]

Most MIS suppliers either moved to the cloud years ago or are now catching up and plan to offer cloud based solutions. Older onsite products will slowly be phased out. Not immediately, but eventually.

There's a reason Capita are effectively being forced to adapt to this model. They realise if they don't move SIMS to the cloud, their customer base will shrink by 3% a year over the next decade.

 

At the primary level, there is more and more growth every year to cloud based MIS (just check the census stats). Once primaries go cloud, they don't go back. The pros and cons are more nuanced for secondaries clearly.

 

My prediction is that schools won't even be able to buy locally hosted MIS within 3-5 years. As a company, we haven't offered local hosting since 2011 and it's been a very good decision.

Rich

[PhilNeal]

Just for the record the vast majority of our schools & LAs are on 1 year contracts - no lock in! Also in England & Wales schools make their own choices anyway!

[matt40k]

no lock in!

 

Just ignore that large yr 1 cost...

[pcstru]

It must surely be the case that half of the "lock in" in any MIS is the cost of change outside of the software purchase and licensing costs. This is also an area where cloud may be worse when considering a change - very limited ability for the competition to reach straight into the database (as Bromcom do for CMIS transfers) and migrate from the 'raw' data. Has anyone migrated from a cloud hosted system?

 

Given the market, most MIS transfers would be from SIMS to something else which (last time we looked) was a saving with any supplier. So cost may not ever have been the biggest factor as far as "lock in" goes.

[Bromcom_Marketing]

It must surely be the case that half of the "lock in" in any MIS is the cost of change outside of the software purchase and licensing costs. This is also an area where cloud may be worse when considering a change - very limited ability for the competition to reach straight into the database (as Bromcom do for CMIS transfers) and migrate from the 'raw' data. Has anyone migrated from a cloud hosted system?

Given the market, most MIS transfers would be from SIMS to something else which (last time we looked) was a saving with any supplier. So cost may not ever have been the biggest factor as far as "lock in" goes.

 

Bromcom has no lock-in within cloud T&Cs. Bromcom will provide school a copy of their SQL database via secured FTP within 48 hours subject and within T&Cs.

With UK G-Cloud (version 9 -pending) is now becoming even more demanding - pushing NIST more strictly, self service and "pay as you go for measured service" and ease of on-boarding and off-boarding with undertakings.

 

More on lock-in with legacy (non-cloud) MIS later ...

[pcstru]

Bromcom has no lock-in within cloud T&Cs.

No one actually has T&C's with lock in clauses do they?

Bromcom will provide school a copy of their SQL database via secured FTP within 48 hours subject and within T&Cs.

I'll be interested to see what is included in that and whether that agreement supports multiple requests as are likely with any complex data migration. I suspect that for many, pulling data using reports might be a better bet (it skips the step of having to reverse engineer sometimes very complicated DB schema, such as the way Bromcom manages hierarchical group memberships or CMIS manages assessment data or SIMS manages ... err, just about anything (only kidding)).

With UK G-Cloud (version 9 -pending) is now becoming even more demanding - pushing NIST more strictly, self service and "pay as you go for measured service" and ease of on-boarding and off-boarding with undertakings.

My point was that being able to switch MIS has much less to do with the capabilities of the cloud/self hosted (add T&C's etc) and much more to do with how embedded the MIS is within the business functions of the school. You can generally change technology a lot easier than you can change people.

[Bromcom_Jay]

Okay - I could be a bit controversial here...

 

As a personal user of all kinds of ICT, the world I live in is in the cloud - G-Suite for all my personal documents (haven't used Microsoft office since I finished Uni in 2010), I have an android phone and Chromebook, Chromecast and Netflix account, I've not plugged my TV into the aerial socket in my house since I moved in.

 

Businesses should be seeing the benefits from Cloud, with cheaper costs (storage, licence, connectivity), better hardware and software choices and no longer having a legacy perpetual licence.

 

As an MIS supplier, we are 100% behind Cloud, but we understand that in some instances a locally hosted system may be a better choice - areas with terrible internet connections being the main one! When the country catches up with the technology, broadband, '5G' etc. then schools will see the full benefit of cloud, but I have to admit currently, the whole country isn't quite there.

 

The initial training costs and staff time to adapt to a change will limit how often schools change MIS - I change my utility provider every year to the cheapest, but all I do is say I want to switch and I get an emailed bill with a different provider logo at the top. The aim for Bromcom is for the system to be so intuitive you don't need much training if any - similar to switching from an android phone to an iPhone, you don't need training you can find your way around.

 

Migrating data should be as easy as giving one MIS provider access to the database and they just swap it over for you, that's how we do it at Bromcom. You should have the ability to transfer all of the data across with no hassle and no limit to how far back the data goes - 5 years is normally standard, but if you want to go back 20 years if the data is there it can be transferred... Then why would you need access to the old system or database?

 

In reply to the original post about league tables - loving the info from @GREED - something I will be looking at a lot! The market share will be dominated by the biggest player for years to come, contracts that have been around for years, quick renewals with LA's and schools, the huge number of consultants and staff focused on it, it won't disappear overnight. But smaller players are gaining more schools and Scholarpack is a good sign that with a tailored cloud MIS system that does the job and fits the people using it, it will spread quickly.

 

If the latest release of a MAT analysis tool from the biggest market share is anything to go by, if they keep developing tools which just about do the job, but only work with their software and anyone else trying to develop something can't access the data they need or the price to be a 3rd party will be too high - nothing will change.

 

Jay

[Banjo]

"It's about ending these stupidly long legacy contracts and lock-ins."

 

Well put - and the damage to the education/schools is immense!

 

Proof of the pudding: 80% of UK market is on legacy MIS software costing £millions more in total cost of ownership and with inconvenience of thick client Windows application on every workstation! And of course denying full all the benefits of true cloud system.

 

But you don't need a a 'cloud' for that, you just need a browser based MIS.

[matt40k]

Picky much? Web based solution could mean onprem. Cloud if defo fully managed by third party. IE no capital costs (for hardware anyway).

[pcstru]

The initial training costs and staff time to adapt to a change will limit how often schools change MIS - I change my utility provider every year to the cheapest, but all I do is say I want to switch and I get an emailed bill with a different provider logo at the top. The aim for Bromcom is for the system to be so intuitive you don't need much training if any - similar to switching from an android phone to an iPhone, you don't need training you can find your way around.

It is not just about how intuitive the software is, it is about how intuitively people craft their business processes to make use of that. The best software in the world will not help if you have poor processes. Also, while I'd agree the Bromcom software is very good, expecting several hundred teachers to just pony up and use it all without any training is just asking for trouble.

 

Migrating data should be as easy as giving one MIS provider access to the database and they just swap it over for you, that's how we do it at Bromcom. You should have the ability to transfer all of the data across with no hassle and no limit to how far back the data goes - 5 years is normally standard, but if you want to go back 20 years if the data is there it can be transferred... Then why would you need access to the old system or database?

I've done a _lot_ (!) of data conversions, including going from CMIS to Bromcom starting a few years ago. My experience is that a fully automated data transfer is either a fantasy or a disaster, depending on where in the process you are. At the beginning it is a fantasy so alluring that one might sink a lot of effort into it. At the end, if you have allowed it to proceed that long without appropriate QA, it will be a disaster as those data quality issues come to light on your live system. You can automate a lot but you cannot migrate data between systems successfully (without unnecessary disruption and cost) without putting a lot of effort into data quality and BPE (business process engineering) upfront.

 

Of course, you can migrate without all that and then spend the next 12 months chasing your tail while you try to stamp out all the fires that keep springing up because you can't now save the attribute you need to because the data that is in another field (which you do not know the correct value of) does not pass validation because the back end migration scripts didn't check that (and any number of other gotchas that tend to surprise people but are often obvious in hindsight). Been there, done that, got the T-shirt as they say.

[Bromcom_Jay]

I've done a _lot_ (!) of data conversions, including going from CMIS to Bromcom starting a few years ago. My experience is that a fully automated data transfer is either a fantasy or a disaster, depending on where in the process you are. At the beginning it is a fantasy so alluring that one might sink a lot of effort into it. At the end, if you have allowed it to proceed that long without appropriate QA, it will be a disaster as those data quality issues come to light on your live system. You can automate a lot but you cannot migrate data between systems successfully (without unnecessary disruption and cost) without putting a lot of effort into data quality and BPE (business process engineering) upfront.

Of course, you can migrate without all that and then spend the next 12 months chasing your tail while you try to stamp out all the fires that keep springing up because you can't now save the attribute you need to because the data that is in another field (which you do not know the correct value of) does not pass validation because the back end migration scripts didn't check that (and any number of other gotchas that tend to surprise people but are often obvious in hindsight). Been there, done that, got the T-shirt as they say.

The data migration at Bromcom isn't automated, it is a real guy (Mike) and his team, they test it, pass the majority of the data back to a school to test, then while they are playing with that we complete the migration of data and finally update the system with it all once they want to go 'live.' - I agree, it is a bit of a dream to have a fully automated system, until all MIS suppliers have the same formats.

 

Also, while I'd agree the Bromcom software is very good, expecting several hundred teachers to just pony up and use it all without any training is just asking for trouble.

 

I think that should be the aim, along with all the admin and 'back-end' work, you should only need a quick word with helpdesk to get the answers you need. Obviously not one MIS system is there yet, but we can work on that!!

[djrscally]

The data migration at Bromcom isn't automated, it is a real guy (Mike) and his team, they test it, pass the majority of the data back to a school to test, then while they are playing with that we complete the migration of data and finally update the system with it all once they want to go 'live.' - I agree, it is a bit of a dream to have a fully automated system, until all MIS suppliers have the same formats.

 

 

 

I think that should be the aim, along with all the admin and 'back-end' work, you should only need a quick word with helpdesk to get the answers you need. Obviously not one MIS system is there yet, but we can work on that!!

 

This relies as much (or more) on the staff as the providers, so I'm not sure you're ever going to hit that point.

[GREED]

As someone that has sat on both sides of the fence during an MIS migration (MIS supplier and school employee), I can 100% say that the cost of change far outweighs the invoiced £££ paid. I recall saying exactly this here about 4 years (and amazing to see that certain individuals who are now agreeing with that point were less open minded then!).

 

As has been stated, it can be the most fantastic efficient and cost saving product in the world, but if no bugger can use it or wants to use it then it isn't a good deal.

 

I think this topic is wandering slightly with some proliferation of advertising of services... Somewhat ironic for me of all people to say! That said, I also feel that some points raised about the market and/or suppliers are somewhat outdated or playing on the headlines of old...