Gongalong Posted June 5, 2018 Posted June 5, 2018 Hi All, Presumably others are getting a 50% increase on their RM Unify contract? We have gone back to [email protected] and complained about this, and asked for it to be fed back to whoever is setting the contract cost, and the Product Manager. Those who also think it's a problem do do this without significant warning may want to do the same.
AlanD Posted June 5, 2018 Posted June 5, 2018 I bought into increasing our licence from CC4.3 to CC4.5 (no actual change) - but doing so allowed me to use their One Drive Mapper....then they changed things so you can't get OneDrive mapper without buying into Unify....(so OneDrive only worked for part of a year) ..and now a massive price increase on Unify.... Never quite undertood the attraction (is there an attraction) to unify...office 365 will do SSO without it....do we really need it?
Gongalong Posted June 5, 2018 Author Posted June 5, 2018 We use a couple of other apps as well, so the SSO is nice. In fact that's the only benefit of Unify that comes to mind.
markwilfan Posted June 5, 2018 Posted June 5, 2018 One of the first things I did when I became nm at my current school. We were paying close to 2.5k just to sync users to o365.
AlanD Posted June 5, 2018 Posted June 5, 2018 One of the first things I did when I became nm at my current school. We were paying close to 2.5k just to sync users to o365. Sorry...one of the first things? What was that? Getting unify? Or replacing it? What was costing 2.5k? We’re you using a federated azure? And if so...was that just to get SSO?
Sylv3r Posted June 5, 2018 Posted June 5, 2018 Ours increased significantly too. We were one of the first schools to use RM Unify so got the introductory price of £500 certainly for the first year and possibly the year after, now it's closer to £2k, when we found out that close to renewal time I didn't have much choice, but I think we will be moving away next year.
AlanD Posted June 5, 2018 Posted June 5, 2018 Ours increased significantly too. We were one of the first schools to use RM Unify so got the introductory price of £500 certainly for the first year and possibly the year after, now it's closer to £2k, when we found out that close to renewal time I didn't have much choice, but I think we will be moving away next year. ...so what do you have it for?....just to allow single sign on for online apps? If so which apps do you use it for? Or perhaps you use google apps rather than O365 which now does SSO with Azure connect...without the costs of federation... OneDrive mapper was nice...but the new enterprise files on demand has the potential to deliver much the same...although I’ve not it working yet...
markwilfan Posted June 5, 2018 Posted June 5, 2018 Sorry...one of the first things? What was that? Getting unify? Or replacing it? What was costing 2.5k? We’re you using a federated azure? And if so...was that just to get SSO?Sorry meant to say rip it out. We use Azure connect to sync AD now for free. No adfs but we do use adfs else where. It was federated which was actually fairly easy to pair apart whilst keeping data and users. We are a gsuite school predominantly now using gcds to sync
markwilfan Posted June 5, 2018 Posted June 5, 2018 We were paying close to 2.5k in total for unify. Will check the invoices. I was discusted
Gongalong Posted June 5, 2018 Author Posted June 5, 2018 The difficulty we'd have now is migrating, as Unify provisions the O365 accounts.
markwilfan Posted June 5, 2018 Posted June 5, 2018 That was my worry too but I managed to unfederate and resync using Azure connect and it all works fine. You can also use Azure AD to provision licences 1
snagrat Posted June 5, 2018 Posted June 5, 2018 The difficulty we'd have now is migrating, as Unify provisions the O365 accounts. You could pay Salamander £500 and let them take control of everything. Much better than Unify
Gongalong Posted June 6, 2018 Author Posted June 6, 2018 Although Salamander Active Directory isn't quite the same thing, and what's to stop them putting the price up?
markwilfan Posted June 6, 2018 Posted June 6, 2018 Although Salamander Active Directory isn't quite the same thing, and what's to stop them putting the price up?Because they are an awesome company and value their customers. It is also the best thing since sliced bread. I consider it my third technician. Saves weeks of time for us which is worth more than the license fee.
snagrat Posted June 6, 2018 Posted June 6, 2018 Although Salamander Active Directory isn't quite the same thing, and what's to stop them putting the price up? What does Unify do that Salamander does not?
markwilfan Posted June 6, 2018 Posted June 6, 2018 What do you find most useful about it? This is actually a surprisingly hard question because it does so much for us that we just take for granted now. As a NM it is the provisioning of staff and students which can be a laborious task, especially when people just turn up at your door and you have no idea who they are. More importantly the archiving of user accounts when they fall off roll or their contract lapses. Salamander also does the heavy lifting for Google Classroom and calendar syncing. Have a search around edugeek, there is much love for salamander. Support is spot on too. You will still need to provision your users up in o365 or Google even if you use Salamander. As I said I followed the RM Unify instructions to defederate and then installed Azure Connect and set that syncing. I can't comment on your set up but for us worked fine. 1
Gongalong Posted June 6, 2018 Author Posted June 6, 2018 @snagrat: Provide SSO to supported apps e.g. we use Parents Evening System and Show My Homework.
markwilfan Posted June 6, 2018 Posted June 6, 2018 @snagrat: Provide SSO to supported apps e.g. we use Parents Evening System and Show My Homework. But these are the things that are achievable without extra cost with adfs
Gongalong Posted June 6, 2018 Author Posted June 6, 2018 @markwilfan: Does it do bulk import of users from a CSV? I'm hoping to rely on an old RM Ranger tool to do that this Summer, but at some point I'm sure that's going to break (if not this Summer!).
Gongalong Posted June 6, 2018 Author Posted June 6, 2018 But these are the things that are achievable without extra cost with adfs I think SMHW might be linkable with O365, but I'm not sure PES can be. Again, it's one of those making-life-easier things, which if saving time is saving cost, but that's becoming marginal with a 50% price increase. I've also forgotten the aforementioned increase from when we were a pilot school, so technically it's a 200% increase since we first started using it.
DrCheese Posted June 6, 2018 Posted June 6, 2018 @snagrat: Provide SSO to supported apps e.g. we use Parents Evening System and Show My Homework. ya, both can be done free with ADFS (We do this) 1
Gongalong Posted June 6, 2018 Author Posted June 6, 2018 Is it just a case of contact their relevant support and hooking up to AD? My biggest panic with extracting from Unify would be mailboxes i.e. losing them!
markwilfan Posted June 6, 2018 Posted June 6, 2018 If you are talking about Unify I contacted RM support and told them I wanted to defederate. They sent me instructions which I followed. I then set up Azure Connect as per MS instructions and it all just carried on syncing. 1
Gongalong Posted June 6, 2018 Author Posted June 6, 2018 @DrCheese: Were these easy to setup? Do these require Azure, or can you use a traditional DC server?
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