Is SIMS Connected a viable option now?

[MartinT]

We will be moving away, but its replacement is not yet decided. Looks like it'll be between Engage and Broadcom.

[geohanson]

Our VPN has been on and off for the last few weeks, so can't do registers in Edulink, Wonde failing so Sign-In-App not working, students' timetables won't update in Edulink as it won't stay connected long enough to sync... Absolute rubbish....

[ColonelPanic]

This might be the unpopular opinion...

 

After getting used to it, we've not had a terrible experience with SIMS connected.

 

I'm on both sides of the wall - as I teach (only part time) as well as being the NM, but the main reason we use SIMS is because the other proper cloud-based MIS solutions don't have the complete functionality that we need for exams/TT/data reporting as much as the data team would like.

 

The TPC server sits fairly happily, other than the passwords expiring for Wonde/Groupcall fairly regularly, I've set up a couple of custom schedules to run the SIMS reporting command line tool for some custom jobs, but the rest of it is well automated.

 

Now for the gripes...

 

It is woefully underprovisioned in Azure by ESS, so the server grinds to a halt during peak times (read: 8:30am).

We managed to offload the SIMS ID logins to the data team, but from what I gather, it's a bit of a faff.

Cross site staff (between two SIMS DB instances) requires an ESS technicians intervention, and never seems to work first time (this links one SIMS ID account to two SIMS sites).

 

Having moved from hosted (downloading RDP files every time you want to log in), and not having it onsite for decades, it wasn't a difficult decision to move to SIMS Connected.

[mavhc]

You'd think with all this fancy cloud stuff they could just increase the cpus/ram for peak time

[HereIGoAgain2601]

Our SIMS connected hasn’t been working reliably for the last 3 weeks. Pretty much every other day there is a major slowdown between 8-9:30 with large number of users unable to access… I wonder what that could be! Counting down the days till we come back in house…. Avoid at all costs!

[3s-gtech]

You'd think with all this fancy cloud stuff they could just increase the cpus/ram for peak time

 

They can, but that wouldn’t be at zero extra cost.

[mavhc]

Can they though, given it's not really a cloud system and it's probably just a load of VMs and isn't that flexible

[3s-gtech]

Really not sure. I believe that the DB hosting infrastructure is a bit more 'true' cloud, with the RDP session hosts being more old school. How much we can actually tell though, I'm not sure - and which is the actual bottleneck?

[HereIGoAgain2601]

Who knows what the issue is they aren’t transparent about it… but it’s down again this morning! 70 days and counting till we go back in house!

[mavhc]

If they could they would, if they want people to use it

[swiftysw1]

We have no choice and going connect. ESS have asked for a list of admin users. What are they on about?

[HereIGoAgain2601]

This will be the list of people who can manage SIMS ID and create user accounts to access.

 

It’s all a bit of a phaf and reliability still continues to be terrible for us.

 

My team has a countdown for how many days are left till we leave!

[bobsmith]

I hate flogging this dead horse but a couple of experiences from me.

 

caveat: Never used SIMS Hosted or SIMS Connected

 

During lockdown we set up a well provisioned on-prem RDS solution - SIMs worked fine on that - we worked from home with full sims access as usual. So the concept is fine.

 

However - that's not exactly the way they do it, and since you don't have the same backend access to fix stuff you're gonna have time lag to resolve issues. Also I imagine we allocated more hardware resources than they did.

Connections to the the third party apps were unaffected as in reality it's still just an on-prem setup - but without remote access bolted on top.

 

True cloud solutions - Arbor, bromcom, engage and all the others just work. Third party apps talk direct to the MIS, upgrades aren't our problem, backups aren't our problem.

Only downside so far has been slow downs when their hosting farm is underprovisioned - but to be fair it's not been bad at all.

 

I'd be really interested in a cost comparison of doing it hosted yourself vs paying them - taking into account the "soft" costs of all the issues that you spend time fixing both on-site and dealing with their tech support instead.

 

But in the end, as others have said, if you're making a decision on where to go next with your MIS - true cloud solutions exist and they work.

 

As for reporting etc raised by an early poster on this thread. Yes SIMS reporting was actually pretty good - but in Bromcom at least - it's a swings and roundabouts thing - some stuff that was pretty easy in SIMS is a pain in the bum to do in Bromcom - but the live data feeds are literally transformational in how you can work with data. Also the scheduling of reports and even just using the built in dashboards - the efficiency and time savings are phenomenal.

 

There's certainly no show stoppers in terms of functionality we lost when we moved away from SIMS.

[985ach]

I'm still avoiding filling in the onboarding document

 

My current thinking is: I should inconvenience the 5-10 users that need remote access on probably less than 10days of the year rather than 100% of all users at any random point on any random day...

 

I did once have a RDS setup but found it painfully slow - maybe there just wasn't enough resources allocated but its something I could re-visit, my other thought is setting up a VPN server on site and allow the staff that need it to tunnel into the network

[coolhands]

And recent experiences? Our HR are telling me that the 3rd party companies they want to use for staff absence software, use the sims ‘cloud’ version. Doesn’t sound too good from this and other threads!

[3s-gtech]

It hasn’t changed.

 

There’s no difference when it comes to the third party add-ons we use - they still run on our old SIMS server which just hosts a copy of SIMS that connects via VPN to the host. Pretty similar mechanism as before with regard to Wonde etc.

[ITGuyNW]

SIMS Connected or Arbor?

 

Our HR are basically waiting for our speeds to be put up a tier then will push for a cloud MIS.

[PotNoodleTech]

Keep it on prem for as long as you can physically battle with the to keep it.

 

Sorry but there's no comparison, SIMS connected is a 1990s MIS botched into a cloud hosted virtual desktop instance - ESS think that qualifies as a "cloud mis" but it doesnt. It's old slow clunky even the mouse is lagged. Uploading and downloading are a potch as you've got to upload and download everything to the intermediate storage on the virtual server rather than straight into SIMS in the browser.

 

Bromcom and Arbor are next gen cloud based MIS's that work natively in your browser and are 20 years ahead of SIMS.

 

If your thinking of moving to ESS cloud - don't. Just move to another MIS.

[jthompson]

SIMS Connected has worked okay for us from a general end user perspective. I've been pleasantly surprised by the apparent lack of lagginess or other service issues. SIMS .net actually works faster for us now that when we had it on-prem, with the app being generall more responsive. The file upload/download shenanigans are extra work for the data and exam offices in particular, but most users don't need to be getting into that.

 

My bugbear from an IT point of view is having to run third-party agents here on prem. It's an awful way to sync stuff that really ought to be being synced cloud-cloud via an API. They're just not as performant, especically if the thrid-party is needing to write back to SIMS. It's like we're paying ESS and operating their cloud-cloud service for them.

[Damon]

Just a heads up, I believe if you are selecting SIMS connected on the contracts portal, you will be committing to a 3 year minimum term. I only mention it as many schools have a SIMS contract until April 25 and may want to explore their options within that 3 year period.

[gaz350b]

SIMS Connected has worked okay for us from a general end user perspective. I've been pleasantly surprised by the apparent lack of lagginess or other service issues. SIMS .net actually works faster for us now that when we had it on-prem, with the app being generall more responsive. The file upload/download shenanigans are extra work for the data and exam offices in particular, but most users don't need to be getting into that.

 

My bugbear from an IT point of view is having to run third-party agents here on prem. It's an awful way to sync stuff that really ought to be being synced cloud-cloud via an API. They're just not as performant, especically if the thrid-party is needing to write back to SIMS. It's like we're paying ESS and operating their cloud-cloud service for them.

 

Pretty much our recent experience.

Mirrored the SIMS launcher link in the portal to reduce the number of clicks users were having to press to get to sims. Worked a treat.