PSFCloud - a nightmare I never seem to wake from.

[Olliesaurus]

Hi all,

 

I just wanted to put some feelers out there to see if it is just our School that is having a never ending nightmare with PSF Cloud or whether it is isolated to the location.

 

My finance team have serious difficulties logging into the RD for PSF Cloud, it will fail out randomly, I counted earlier and it sprung to life and let me login after the 15th attempt, sometimes its 3 attempts, sometimes more!

 

Thanks

[mwnci]

Yes, we have had problems over the last year or 2 particularly around intermittent drop outs. The connection at our end was very stable and eventually a policy change on their server cluster seemed to help the issue. We would get the window showing that the RDP connection had dropped, followed by a looped attempt to reestablish the connection. Very poor. I note that SCOMIS offer a hosted PSF solution. As a user of their hosted SIMS platform, I can confirm that that is solid, so the PSF solution may be a good alternative to PSFCloud.

[FishCustard]

PSF in general seems to be a recipe for disaster. Their local client install process involves about 40 steps, three programs, eye of newt and a goat skull...

[Asgard]

Does anyone use the PSFCloud budget holder option....

 

It basically has two fields that I asked could they pre-fil and hide as itt’s basically running on our “own” instance (Database & Company fields)

 

Basically got to told “no”

 

Then asked about ADFS as we use it quite a bit and our HR System and a few other external systems.

 

“

PS do not intend to incorporate ADFS or any other functions to prepopulate web page logins for security reasons and the risk that it would expose the login to hacking when the website is externally facing. Our current approach passes the NCC penetrative tests accreditation.

“

 

Despite me telling them ADFS doesn’t pre-populate their page I was told flat no.

 

Then like others here the RDP just breaks and they have to send a new RDP file after asking what we have changed....

 

Nothing and we have a firewall rule to allow RDP and some other stuff direct to their domains.

 

I miss symmetry financials cloud even despite it’s shocking reliance on Java and endpoint requirements.

Edited September 18, 2018 by Asgard

[HPlum78]

I love companies that pass IaaS of as a cloud solution as a solution based on IaaS is not really a cloud solution! PaaS or SaaS is a cloud solution and thats the companies that we should sit up and listen to as that's where a true saving can be realised, and demonstrates a company with some expertise. Also based on not offering an SSO solution due whatever reasons that they state is a clear demonstration of a company that does not know what they are doing. As part of all your cloud service assessments surly support for SSO is a base requirement these days!? Else all you have done is copied your user accounts to a third party!

[Asgard]

Exactly.

Our ex FD once said to me “ they throw Cloud at the end just to get people like me to fall for it ?!?,”

 

This sparked a conversation about the mythical cloud they are touting (both Symmetry and PSF).

 

I asked PSF about no SSO and possibly having users who might naturally use the same password which would actually increase the attack footprint ( I got on my soap box after being slapped down about passing a Penetration test....)

 

PSF

 

Get in the sea.

 

 

Don’t get me wrong symmetry was painful and it’s reliance on specific versions of java , because of Oracle... but it was more of a cloud solution than PSF...

 

PSFHosted would be a more apt name.

 

Our HR System is great, fully web enabled, yeah call it cloud haha, works on pretty much every device, no end point requirements and straight out the box supports ADFS.

 

Oh and it sailed trough a JISC penetration test Mr PSF [emoji848]

Edited September 18, 2018 by Asgard

[kennysarmy]

But whether it's IaaS, PaaS or SaaS if it's managed off site and takes load of our ageing on-prem infrastructure and puts managing upgrades etc at the vendors door then all is good - no?

 

Assuming it works!

[kennysarmy]

They do actually refer to it as Paas in their brochure:

 

https://www.psfinancials.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/PSF-Cloud-Brochure.pdf

[localzuk]

Considering how much they charge for it, I would have to say it isn't worth the money - we've looked at it and we'd be able to buy half our entire Trust's server cluster every 3 years with just the cost of the PSF Cloud.