RM CC4 - confused

[EduUser]

Hi all,

 

I'm a very experienced programmer and low level software and hardware engineer, and know the unix and Mac world extremely well. I've coded OS's for firewalls and embedded platforms, but haven't really touched the windows world in many years and know very little about the big names in education for network management.

 

My child's school is looking at some new support contracts as they will have no one technical on site soon and asked for some advice. I've just read the proposals and noticed the school has RM CC4 deployed. I tried to look up more information about it but it isn't even advertised at RM anymore, and I'm seeing a lot of posts about it going back to 2010 and earlier. From what I understand it sits on top of windows and tries to dumb down device and build management etc?

 

I suspect the current support with RM for CC4 is expired or expiring soon. Can someone give me a quick primer on the state of CC4 right now? Is it legacy? What is RM's current replacement, and what is the best replacement in the market if not sticking with RM?

 

They are also using RM Unify for single sign on.

 

Basically my concerns at this point are that they're going to get tied into a cheap looking manage-all support contract with one of these companies, who is then going to up sell them a whole refurb. Not only that but any support issues will get offloaded to each suppliers support contracts, and support there may not even be in place. The school, in trying to get one company to look after everything, may end up in a bigger mess and more unforseen costs.

 

I'd prefer to put some time, and perhaps donate money, to manage migrating to a complete and current system, and incorporate any support included, into a complete support plan, or possibly even hire a full time person to support in house.

 

It's very early in the process and I don't have all the information at hand, but I'd like to go in as prepared as possible, so any insight you may have would be really helpful.

 

My instinct is to rip out CC4 and migrate to vanilla windows. Donate a couple of high end servers and whatever else is required, and outsource the management to a third party company in the education support domain. Then the school can focus costs on licences for any software they actually need, and going forward almost any support company could bid year on year for the contract.

 

(I'm going on a lot of assumptions right now though)

[djm968]

My response would depend on what type and the size of the School, but RMCC4 is long past end of life so as a starting point, I would definitely rip that out go Vanilla.

[supportman]

CC4 is ancient and very costly

 

But of course, if they have nobody in school supporting ICT then "over the top" systems like that are needed generally.

 

The vast majority of schools run normal vanilla networks now, but each school is different.

[EduUser]

Thanks for your response. That's what I suspected, and if they're still running that, then their server hardware is probably just as old.

 

It's a primary with around 400 students. I'll speak to them today/tomorrow hopefully and get a complete picture on what their setup is. They told me 'dont worry we're moving to the cloud' :/. Comments like that worry me because it gives me the impression someone has sold them that as a catch-all solution for everything.

Edited November 14, 2022 by EduUser

[EduUser]

CC4 is ancient and very costly

 

But of course, if they have nobody in school supporting ICT then "over the top" systems like that are needed generally.

 

The vast majority of schools run normal vanilla networks now, but each school is different.

I think that must have been the initial idea, but since now they're looking to for a support contract with someone on site every week, we're moving to the middle ground where the saving from ditching that system can pay for someone on site to support a vanilla one.

[djm968]

Yes that would worry me too. Cloud only can work, as long as you have the infrastructure in place to support it.

 

Questions I would ask are what devices have they got?

Are they Google or Microsoft or both?

Any iPads and if so how are they currently managed?

 

Then I'd start looking at the infrastructure, if they are "Going Cloud" they're going to need a fast reliable Internet connection, decent Wi-Fi, switches etc. etc.

Edited November 14, 2022 by djm968

[EduUser]

CC4 is ancient and very costly

 

But of course, if they have nobody in school supporting ICT then "over the top" systems like that are needed generally.

 

The vast majority of schools run normal vanilla networks now, but each school is different.

 

Sorry forgot to ask, what's the rough yearly cost on something like cc4 for that size school? The quote I'm seeing for support are literally remote support with someone on site once a week, or once a month, and I don't think they realise this person is at best going to keep things chugging along and more likely tell them it's all old and their company can buy them what they need!

 

The later quote is with RM too.

Edited November 14, 2022 by EduUser

[psydii]

My instinct is to rip out CC4 and migrate to vanilla windows. Donate a couple of high end servers and whatever else is required, and outsource the management to a third party company in the education support domain. Then the school can focus costs on licenses for any software they actually need, and going forward almost any support company could bid year on year for the contract.

 

This is a solid plan. I would caution against the idea that education IT support companies are interchangeable. They all have their preferred way of doing things, there is no standard config for Windows in a school, and usually the next team will struggle with / blame the previous supplier for things that really ought not to be a problem. This is different to say a VMWARE / CISCO / HP SAN where there are validated infrastructure designs and any appropriately trained engineer will instantly know their way around a configuration, provided the initial implementation followed the validate design.

 

 

They told me 'dont worry we're moving to the cloud'

Its well worth looking at this in detail. Primaries can be fully cloud without too much of a challenge. Depending on whether they are looking at Google or Microsoft, their IWB / Classroom Screens might need a change of approach, as may printing (if they have central print accounting they will need a cloud equivalent, but they may just print direct to the devices, so again no problem?); their MIS is probably already cloud based, if not thats a project to migrate to a cloud MIS which can be quite the change; finally their wifi will need looking at, with a CC4 network its quite possible authentication is tied to their Windows Domain, this will need migrating whether to the new Windows infrastructure or to the Cloud - though cloud will have additional costs if it isn't already a cloud first system.

 

 

 

In my (very limited) experience of Primaries, once the right configuration and software is on the right machines and there are the appropriate shared folders set up, the key support issue is not Windows Domain management, but hardware maintenance/support. The challenge being that an FTE is often too much, and a 1 or 2 day a week roaming support engineer is not enough.

[sigma]

This is a solid plan. I would caution against the idea that education IT support companies are interchangeable. They all have their preferred way of doing things, there is no standard config for Windows in a school, and usually the next team will struggle with / blame the previous supplier for things that really ought not to be a problem. This is different to say a VMWARE / CISCO / HP SAN where there are validated infrastructure designs and any appropriately trained engineer will instantly know their way around a configuration, provided the initial implementation followed the validate design.

 

 

 

Its well worth looking at this in detail. Primaries can be fully cloud without too much of a challenge. Depending on whether they are looking at Google or Microsoft, their IWB / Classroom Screens might need a change of approach, as may printing (if they have central print accounting they will need a cloud equivalent, but they may just print direct to the devices, so again no problem?); their MIS is probably already cloud based, if not thats a project to migrate to a cloud MIS which can be quite the change; finally their wifi will need looking at, with a CC4 network its quite possible authentication is tied to their Windows Domain, this will need migrating whether to the new Windows infrastructure or to the Cloud - though cloud will have additional costs if it isn't already a cloud first system.

 

 

 

In my (very limited) experience of Primaries, once the right configuration and software is on the right machines and there are the appropriate shared folders set up, the key support issue is not Windows Domain management, but hardware maintenance/support. The challenge being that an FTE is often too much, and a 1 or 2 day a week roaming support engineer is not enough.

 

Yes to everything said above.

 

Compared to a vanilla solution, RM or whever will always want their cut on top and that comes out of the school's IT budget that might better be spent on more/better devices.

 

If they do go with RM or another company, they should ask for references and make contact and ask searching questions.

 

Remote support can only do so much. It depends on the IT competency of the school staff. It's hard to diagnose that somebody has unplugged a power injector to a wireless access point remotely, "my board isn't working" (bluetak stuck to the board, things stuck round the board, someone's unplugger the computer and only put back the HDMI and not the USB....etc I spend more time fixing this kind of thing on my weekly visits than I do on software installation or issues. (Yes I always show shomebody how to fix it themselves rather than waiting for me....)

 

The amount of support time also depends on how much of the getting quotes for kit and sorting out licences the school will do and how much they expect to be done for them.

[EduUser]

Very helpful and interesting points, thank you all so much. I’ll see what further information I can get tomorrow, I’m really curious myself too.

[HereIGoAgain2601]

We have just removed RM CC4 from a primary school over the October half term. School a hundred times better off.

 

They went from paying RM managed support for a technician and CC4 and could afford an engineer full time… which is just bonkers. There is an argument that when things are done right they don’t need that much support. 1 day a week is probably reasonable for a primary of that size with a couple of weeks in the summer / half term.

 

RM had left the school to rot. Mis match of whatever RM was pushing that week. Meanwhile nothing proactive has been done. Servers still running 2012 R2 and PaperCut that’s three years out of date and full of all sorts of exploits.

 

In my previous role we supported a 600 pupil primary to go fully office 365 / intune / azure AD. managed with no servers on site. It worked great on that scale.

[atcoates]

Just to add a different viewpoint. I manage 8 CC4 sites with a single technician. The cost to each site from RM is £1200. For that, we get unlimited support plus access to downloads of packaged software. We also pay a few hundred pounds at each site to allow us to build as many machines onto the system as possible. For us, it's a cost-effective solution.

 

We still have two sites on server 2012 and these will be migrated by RM before their end-of-support date which is October 2023. RM have been warning schools about cut-off dates for servers since Server 2000 went EOL, but they can't force a school to spend money. Also, I've never seen RM push Papercut so it's not a solution they support so would have been down to the school to update, as we do.

 

We're also working with RM to Migrate all of our schools to 365\Intune\azure as mentioned by @jthornton1605 as for schools this size it's the right solution now.

[slugshead]

Everything RM was legacy 10 years ago.

 

cc4 is not going to be maintained past Win10 22h2.

[atcoates]

Everything RM was legacy 10 years ago.

 

cc4 is not going to be maintained past Win10 22h2.

Where is this info coming from?

[howartp]

Just to add a different viewpoint.

 

We still have two sites on server 2012 and these will be migrated by RM before their end-of-support date which is October 2023. RM have been warning schools about cut-off dates for servers since Server 2000 went EOL, but they can't force a school to spend money.

Appreciate the response.

 

We're secondary school with 1800 students and team of 3. Umming and aahing as to how to proceed in Summer 2023.

 

I'm currently (about to) tackle RM about how CC4 stands up in the cyber world we're in:

 

• Cyber Essentials, Pingcastle and MS best practice (pick and choose what you like) all discourage daily use of Domain Administrator accounts yet RM use them throughout CC4 and some of them are hardcoded at point of install.
  
• We can't use Protected Accounts / Service Accounts for fear of breaking things.
  
• Servers out of date/support (our CC4 servers are 2016) with no approach from RM to update them.
  
• Just moved to UEV last year in order to upgrade Win10 OS, but then discover UEV is all but retired now.
  
• And various other points I haven't yet got in my head but i've been building up a picture since June when I presented a combined Cyber Essentials/Pingcastle "Action plan" to our SLT.
  

I had to put the report on hold over summer and due to come back to it this/next week.

 

Anyone else any feelings on this element of CC4 please chip-in or pm me direct.

 

Peter

Edited November 15, 2022 by howartp

[atcoates]

PM on way

[IKWeb]

RM CC4 is still fit for purpose depending on what the school's needs are. Those saying it's EOL and not fit for purpose are incorrect IMO. CC4 has always taken a bashing - Heck so did CC3, and Connect back in the day as people always thought they could do better for cheaper. In some cases yes you could. But these people never fully understood that all schools are in the same boat as they are.

 

You have schools that don't have an IT dept and leave the management of devices to the IT staff who also have to teach. You also have schools where they do have IT staff and when you start to scratch the surface these staff don't have a clue what to do on vanilla systems - I have seen this first hand, schools advised by IT staff to remove CC4, or Ergo's F2T system saying they could do better - 12 months later then have moved on as they didn't have a clue and left the school high and dry.

 

Also in response to some of the other posts again - IMO -

 

We can't use Protected Accounts / Service Accounts for fear of breaking things. - This is incorrect - nothing is stopping you from creating service accounts for software e.g Backup Exec, Veeam - You wouldn't create them as CC4 users - but AD users.

Servers out of date/support (our CC4 servers are 2016) with no approach from RM to update them. - I assume you have some point of contact at RM - you can get CC4 running on a more current Server OS. eg Server 2019 but it will no doubt be a service you would have to pay for to get them updated.

Just moved to UEV last year in order to upgrade Win10 OS, but then discover UEV is all but retired now. Wouldnt say that is an RM issue - Would be putting that one at Good old Bill Gates door.

 

Another way to also look at this - CC4 has been around as a system long before Cyber Essentials was even thought about. So yes it may not be geared to Cyber Essentials but if you are an RM school I am sure a chat with RM could soon fix that.

 

Some people have mentioned cloud-only solutions - these are also good for example MS Intune / Endpoint - or whatever Microsoft is calling it this week. But these come with a higher cost to manage and maintain due to skill sets that are needed to keep them up to date, manage the day-to-day running, and at the same time test and trial new functionality.

 

I guess I will end this by saying IMO - A CC4 network is good when used correctly (I have used both CC3 and 4 in the past) - when you want to move outside of what CC4 offers then you will have issues as things are not as flexible as they could be. But on the other hand, you can have a vanilla system or even a cloud system which will cost you more to manage and maintain and require a higher-skilled person or team to do this vs what a CC4 network would.

 

It's all swings and roundabouts and what fits the needs of one school won't work for another.

[5tu]

Some people have mentioned cloud-only solutions - these are also good for example MS Intune / Endpoint - or whatever Microsoft is calling it this week. But these come with a higher cost to manage and maintain due to skill sets that are needed to keep them up to date, manage the day-to-day running, and at the same time test and trial new functionality.

 

.... when you want to move outside of what CC4 offers then you will have issues as things are not as flexible as they could be. But on the other hand, you can have a vanilla system or even a cloud system which will cost you more to manage and maintain and require a higher-skilled person or team to do this vs what a CC4 network would.

 

As someone with both CCx and vanilla experience, I strongly disagree with both of these statements and would argue the opposite is true!

[IKWeb]

While everyone is welcome to an opinion you only have to look at the pay scales for these roles.

 

If you look at how much schools want to pay for say an entry-level IT Technician you are looking at around 15k to maybe around 25k (again depending on what area of the UK you are from)

 

Take a look on say LinkedIn for establishments that are looking for Intune-qualified people - They are paying 50k plus, some over double that. No way schools will be able to afford that kind of wage for 1 member of an IT Team. If you are picking up an Intune-educated staff member for 18 to 27k I would be questioning the knowledge of that person.

 

As for the other comment I made - Why would you strongly disagree? - Would be nice to have some content behind your comment so I can understand why you would strongly disagree. Rather than just saying you strongly disagree.....

[5tu]

While everyone is welcome to an opinion you only have to look at the pay scales for these roles.

 

If you look at how much schools want to pay for say an entry-level IT Technician you are looking at around 15k to maybe around 25k (again depending on what area of the UK you are from)

 

Take a look on say LinkedIn for establishments that are looking for Intune-qualified people - They are paying 50k plus, some over double that. No way schools will be able to afford that kind of wage for 1 member of an IT Team. If you are picking up an Intune-educated staff member for 18 to 27k I would be questioning the knowledge of that person.

 

As for the other comment I made - Why would you strongly disagree? - Would be nice to have some content behind your comment so I can understand why you would strongly disagree. Rather than just saying you strongly disagree..... ��

 

I disagree because the skills required to manage Intune / Endpoint / 365 are no more advanced than the skills required to manage a CCx network. Yes they're different skills but I'd argue learning them is very achievable for any competent IT tech.

 

Regarding your comment regarding flexibility, my own experience of moving to a vanilla setup showed me how much more flexibility is available when you're not constrained to doing things the "RM" way.

 

Lastly, the salary comment just isn't true..... at least not for the amount of Intune knowledge required to cloud manage school IT resources. There are plenty of folks here on edugeek who clearly have a competent level of Intune knowledge, certainly enough to progress their schools towards modern device management.

 

Ultimately, we're responding to this thread in response to @EduUser's questions - hopefully the responses given will help him/her to support their school in their decision making.

[howartp]

We can't use Protected Accounts / Service Accounts for fear of breaking things. - This is incorrect - nothing is stopping you from creating service accounts for software e.g Backup Exec, Veeam - You wouldn't create them as CC4 users - but AD users.

I was referring to the RM accounts - SystemAdmin, PackageBuilder, BuildSystem and the 8 or so 'ServiceHost' users - that are all Domain Admins and we can't change without someone from RM confirming it's not going to break.

 

Servers out of date/support (our CC4 servers are 2016) with no approach from RM to update them. - I assume you have some point of contact at RM - you can get CC4 running on a more current Server OS. eg Server 2019 but it will no doubt be a service you would have to pay for to get them updated.

I was replying to the comment above that "RM have been warning schools about cut-off dates for servers since Server 2000 went EOL, but they can't force a school to spend money" - we've had no such warning or contact to ask/suggest/force to upgrade. All my other suppliers are keen to tell me several times that their product is about to become EOL and how they'd love me to pay them money to upgrade.

 

Just moved to UEV last year in order to upgrade Win10 OS, but then discover UEV is all but retired now. Wouldnt say that is an RM issue - Would be putting that one at Good old Bill Gates door.

Fair enough, but where is support for ESR? There's no mention on RM.com that UEV is out of date/retired.

 

Another way to also look at this - CC4 has been around as a system long before Cyber Essentials was even thought about. So yes it may not be geared to Cyber Essentials but if you are an RM school I am sure a chat with RM could soon fix that.

Except we had to send an official letter to the head of RM Support just to get our Service Host password changed following a cyber breach last year; they were incredulous that we were considering such a request and said no to start with. Ultimately cost us a half-days engineering time to uninstall and reinstall various elements of RM.

 

It's all swings and roundabouts and what fits the needs of one school won't work for another.

Agreed. We could run with or without it, but at the moment its easier to stay than to learn/re-learn the alternatives such as WDS or SCCM.

[IKWeb]

I disagree because the skills required to manage Intune / Endpoint / 365 are no more advanced than the skills required to manage a CCx network. Yes they're different skills but I'd argue learning them is very achievable for any competent IT tech.

 

Regarding your comment regarding flexibility, my own experience of moving to a vanilla setup showed me how much more flexibility is available when you're not constrained to doing things the "RM" way.

 

Lastly, the salary comment just isn't true..... at least not for the amount of Intune knowledge required to cloud manage school IT resources. There are plenty of folks here on edugeek who clearly have a competent level of Intune knowledge, certainly enough to progress their schools towards modern device management.

 

Ultimately, we're responding to this thread in response to @EduUser's questions - hopefully the responses given will help him/her to support their school in their decision making.

 

Like I said everyone is welcome to an opinion, but the stats around pay scales, etc, and needs - which EduUser will need to take into account if they move to a cloud offering are totally different. You only need to look on LinkedIn or any job boards to see this. You will pay a lot more for an MS Intune-qualified engineer vs a school ICT technician. Don't get me wrong some schools may be happy for someone who isn't qualified. That is a call they have to make. But to say it isn't true with lots of evidence to back this up. IMO is incorrect and wrong.

 

For the flexibility - yes I agree with you 100%, a Vanilla system will ALWAYS be more flexible than a CCx network. To say otherwise would be totally stupid. But what CCx and other like Ergo F2T does is provide a management interface that anyone can use. whereas Vanilla systems doesn't. again needing a more skilled person to manage which will come with a higher cost.

 

Finally - yes lots of people here on EduGeek will have knowledge of intune it's been around for years. But there is knowing your way around intune to be able to progress a school's move to the cloud vs being qualified and knowing it like the back of your hand to a point where you can 100% support it without any 3rd party help/advice.

 

On that note - I know we won't agree - but we can always agree to disagree 😁

 

Have a good evening.

[StormTrooper59]

This post is straying away from the OP but just to add to the ongoing discussion, I work in a school that uses CC4, and I have worked in other schools in the past that have used Vanilla. I can see the arguments for both sides and I'm not really pro for either side but I have to say that CC4 works well in my current environment and we don't tend to have many issues with it at all. RM Support when we have had to contact them can sometimes be a watching paint dry experience but i'd argue the same for some other suppliers in the industry (IRIS i'm looking at you!). I guess it's about weighing up the needs and priority of the school vs the technical ability of the staff supporting/managing the network.

[sigma]

Wondering how many schools have moved from RM to vanilla compared to the number of schools that have gone the other way over the last 20 years?

[mikes]

I've never heard of a school moving to CC4 in the past 10 years (other than some of the BSF ones back when), but 1 or 2 post every year here about moving away from it. We installed CC4 a year after it came out and it was trash. Much happier vanilla.

 

And also I found the expectation that an untrained ICT tech could use the system not to be true also; the thing was so fragile it was always going wrong, machines needing rebuilding, patches needing to be run on the server; incompetent RM support giving bad advice...

 

Honestly if I was a primary I'd consider just moving to g-suite and using chromebooks. They can all sign in using Classroom and do homework etc there. Though there are problems with web filtering / kid friendly browsing that need to be considered. I'm not sure what a primaries requirements are but saying that our feeder primaries can't be using Google as all our Year 7's barely even know what a user account is, same with left/right click, so they can't be doing that much advanced IT...