Considering Leaving BTLS...

[Strawdog]

I'm looking at other providers for our campus internet connection, we're currently with BTLS as previously we had no choice due to being under a BSF ICT managed service contract - we exited from that a couple of years ago and as much as I wanted to switch provider at the same time it just wasn't practical with all the upheaval we had at the time (separation from a shared data centre/phone system, etc.).

 

BTLS appear completely unwilling to review/reduce their service costs which are extortionate compared with open market rates and seem to just be relying upon apathy to retain customers however I will say their service is generally stable with few outages. Unfortunately getting clear answers about the process of leaving from them is an uphill slog.

 

Has anyone got any experience of exiting from them? I'm looking for pointers on the hand over of the Office 365 tenancy, migration of Lightspeed configuration (white/blacklists, IP exceptions, etc.), mid year exit costs and any random curveballs they may throw my way...

 

The two main contenders for new service provider are TNP (The Network People - offshoot of LUNS) and Schools Broadband - TNP is the pricier offering (year 1 costs, with hardware/support, would still only be the same as our current annual BTLS costs, we'd see significant savings in year 2 and beyond) but I have more confidence in their level of service compared with Schools Broadband.

 

Our current setup is 2 * 100Mbps fibre lines on divergent routes with load balancing / fail over between them - we'd look to replicate this but put one of the lines onto a 1Gbps bearer to allow for future expansion.

[LukeC]

I have now moved a few schools away from BTLS. Fairly straight forward process. Never moved any of the light speed rules. Office 365 is straightforward as you are in your own tenancy so you can leave it as it is just remembering to remove the BTLS admin accounts there's 5 or 6. they will typically assign the global admin rights on transfer to the head or itcoord and no one else even if requested. They do take their time on this process. With our office 365 I have moved them into one single tenancy so has been a bit more involved as we have ahd to download all the PSTS from 365 and reimport them into the new tenancy. (we used the search and discovery process of 365)

 

On latest request of leaving I was told it is 6 months notice ie paying half of your bill. Or the cut off point is usually mid December to hand your notice in for following April.

Check who hosts your DNS as some times you need to regain control of it from nominet straight forward process again but can catch you out.

[RichCowell]

It's a while since we moved from them in 2011, but they were exactly the same then, and we've saved a fortune since... Just don't expect anything to be done quickly...

 

Do they host your website or Moodle? You'll need to look at alternative solutions for those if so.

 

Also if you still use your .sch.uk domain, it would be worth getting that hosted elsewhere too (and moving away from BTLS is a great opportunity to introduce a new, friendlier domain!).

 

We went with Virtue Technologies, based in Lancashire - can't recommend them highly enough (they can host the .sch.uk domains too).

[Strawdog]

DNS is still on the LancsNGFL name servers - are they likely to nuke these records when we leave? Any time I've tried to talk to someone at BTLS about hosting or DNS changes it's generally been met by them having no idea what I'm talking about (there's still a good few decent techs working behind the scenes but trying to talk to one of them is an exercise in corporate frustration).

 

Moved Moodle and our website away from them years ago - back when they were going to cancel Moodle, no they aren't, yes they are, no they aren't but it's a bolt on, etc.. I was on the County Moodle Development Group at the time and it was a shambles, stuck on v1.9 5 years after it had been released. Glad I made all those trips over to Borwick Hall for the meetings :x

Edited May 8, 2018 by Strawdog

[RichCowell]

Not sure what they're likely to do, and it may have changed since we moved (hopefully!) - they wouldn't allow us to have our own domain back then, and we wanted to move everything really, so moved that too... since moved to Office 365 with our own tenancy, rather than one that's part of theirs, potentially with features removed like GoDaddy do...

[SchoolsBroadband]

Thanks for considering us @Strawdog

 

Bigger bandwidths have come tumbling down of late in price so you may want to consider some bigger lines rather than just a couple of 100Mbits load balanced.

 

As aways I'm more than happy to answer any questions you may have around our service and I've sent you a PM.

 

We can also help migrate your Lightspeed rules to our Netsweeper platform as we've been doing this for a number of our existing customers from our old platform (Lightspeed) to our new platform (Netsweeper).

 

Thanks

 

Dave