Are ESS trying to make it harder to migrate away from to SIMS?

[russlp]

More love from ESS

 

Dear

We understand through conversations with customers that Scomis are recommending that schools consider adopting a new MIS provider in place of SIMS.

 

In doing so Scomis are breaching their contract with ESS and their own Contracts Procedure Rules, by favouring one particular business over another. Furthermore, the migration methods offered by the MIS provider Scomis are seeking to promote breach our intellectual property rights (IPR) and would put any school that followed them in breach of their contract with Education Software Solutions Limited (ESS).

 

The main purpose of this email is to explain what you need to do to avoid breaching your contract and the ensuing liability that would be created.

 

Choice of MIS

You are free to choose your MIS provider, and your Local Authority have no right to pressure or coerce you into choosing a provider that suits their commercial purposes. Where a Local Authority benefits commercially or is directly or indirectly being rewarded for recommending a supplier, they have a duty to declare that interest and to explain the reasons why they are doing so.

 

Since 2022 Scomis have been operating (and charging certain schools for use of) their own SIMS hosting service without having a license from ESS to do so. Customers using this service are unable to use SIMS Next Gen and we have therefore been trying for more than two years to agree an orderly plan for the winding down of this unlawful service.

 

Regrettably no such agreement has been reached, and Devon County Council have instead chosen to announce that they will cease offering SIMS hosting services and supporting SIMS by the end of March 2025 while actively promoting another MIS provider’s service.

We believe that this decision is driven by the commercial interests of Devon County Council and not the best interests of schools.

 

Migration to an authorised hosting of SIMS

Our position is that in closing its unlawful SIMS hosting service, Scomis must now provide all users of this service with such assistance and support as they require to migrate to either SIMS Connected (SIMS in the cloud) or SIMS on-premise, with minimal operational disruption.

Scomis doing anything other than supporting the migration of customers to SIMS Connected or SIMS on-premise, will compound their longstanding breach of our IPR, and potentially draw customers into the breach.

We will not charge Scomis hosting customers for the transfer to SIMS Connected, and we will also not charge these customers SIMS Connected fees or support fees for hosting or support until 1st April 2025.

Going forward, the annual hosting charges for SIMS Connected will be the same or lower than the fees we understand Scomis charge. We would expect customers transferring to SIMS Connected and/or using ESS support services to make a saving, releasing funds for other purposes.

 

Migration methods

{REDACTED}

 

What should a MAT or school do?

We hope that all MATs and schools will:

• remind Scomis of their publicly stated position of being MIS agnostic, and that it is a breach of the Devon County Council’s stated impartiality rules to be recommending one commercial provider over another; and

• independently assess their SIMS hosting options, as set out in our letter dated 17th October. If you are not in receipt of that communication, please request via [email protected]

 

This communication also sets out the safe and lawful options for data migration.

 

MATs and schools should:

• reject any migration proposal that incites them to breach their contract with ESS. This includes any so-called “legal guarantees” offered by alternative providers, the provision of which only confirms that those offering such guarantees are aware of the potential legal implications for the MATs and schools involved; and

• remind Scomis that ESS have reserved their legal rights and that Scomis should not be inciting MATs or schools to breach their contract with ESS.

 

You may have already received an invite to SIMS’ webinars, which will cover all the benefits and new functionality of SIMS Next Gen, SIMS Connected and SIMS Support. If you haven't received this you can find full details on our website.

Conclusion

We are very disappointed that it is necessary for such a communication to be issued to our customers. Multiple pragmatic and proactive solutions have been put forward to Devon County Council / Scomis over the last two years, to avoid this situation.

We are committed to the seamless and free migration from Scomis’ unlicenced hosting platform to SIMS Connected or SIMS on-premise. We are also committed to ensuring that those choosing to move to an alternative MIS can do so simply and safely, following the documented approved process.

We look forward to meeting you on the webinars (dates available on our website) and bringing to life how SIMS Next Gen, SIMS Connected and SIMS support all work to help your schools and pupils thrive.[/font][/color]

 

Best wishes,

Phil Roberts,

Managing Director, SIMS

Edited November 1, 2024 by ZeroHour
Redacted by request in case of pending actions between companies - EduGeek

[dmj]

Crazy. ESS literally shut down scomis from offering support/hosting, then bitch about it.

[synaesthesia]

ESS & Phil Roberts can take a long walk off a short pier. There may be (and obviously likely is) truth involved in that, but wow, that company already looks petty, small minded and just clearly begging to be lost to history alongside the RM Nimbus and the cane. At least the Nimbus can be looked back on fondly.

[PotNoodleTech]

The last gasps of a dying company.

[Rob_D]

This will require either first moving back on-premise or to SIMS Connected.

So you've got to migrate from Socmis to on-prem SIMS and then migrate from there to another MIS? I can see so many schools doing that...

[russlp]

It's such a bizarre email! Scomis have never suggested what MIS we should consider. Desperate times.

[supportman]

Utterly desperate...

 

I could understand a bit if they had a comparable MIS product to sell, but they have nothing other than a remote desktop version of Sims. Its almost laughable.

[MrEprise]

There is so much wrong with that statement. Indeed in our case, we were given 3 options of which "consider adopting a new MIS" was one of them but there certainly was no mention of any specific provider. As it is, we're only going with On-premise as a stop-gap solution until we can jump ship and the more schools the better I really think.

[sefton]

We are also committed to ensuring that those choosing to move to an alternative MIS can do so simply and safely

 

Laughable

[coolhands]

Oh dear. We can’t brow-beat Scomis / Devon county council so we’re going to fear monger you customers instead. Way to go! I think I’ve had it with ESS / SIMS now, and am starting to think about future migration, even though I’ve been reluctant due to my own familiarity with sims.

[DODICT]

Remember there is still 40 odd percent of English schools using this product and currently still the market leader. An impressive market position for a aged and so very poor product and who treats their partners and their customer truly awfully. Were moving in the right direction but still a way to go to. Anyone one sticking with SIMS is holding themselves back and their organisation back on a product that simply isnt comparable in the current market. And dont think I've spent 10 years learning SIMS so don't want to change - IT SHOULDNT TAKE 10 YEARS TO LEARN A SYSTEM ! Move on and you'll be better off in a term just like the 40% of the market that have already made the move.

[Hedgehog13]

So who did this email from SIMS go out to? Was it to all schools that use SCOMIS or all schools in Devon etc?

[Hedgehog13]

Who was this email sent to? Was it to all schools or just SCOMIS schools?

[MrEprise]

ScoMIS schools I suspect. We received it and so did another in our Trust who use the ScoMIS hosted SIMS service. Another school in our Trust who uses Arbor didn't get any of these emails.

[mthomas08]

These are the things that spring to mind, but there are others...

 

We don't have that many issues with Bromcom.

-reliability and performance were major problems but this year things have greatly improved.

 

Obviously we had that major problem to do with Azure and our email system not working with Bromcom.

 

Leaving SIMs, there are two major issues but I don't know the details, generally had to do with ease of tasks:

-Data Manager does a lot of reports and she struggles with how easy reports would work (something to do with exporting and importing the data) - SIMs was better and easier. She's discussed with Bromcom and there is no current solution.

-Attendance could do something in SIMs with ease and were told to do XYZ instead of just X.

 

Both were discussed with Bromcom.

 

I've told them to chuck it on the Dev Ideas page which I say does seem to get attention. Not daily but every few months a bunch of things are taken to work on. I've voted on like 30 things and most of them have been taken or already deployed.

 

I still think Bromcom have some way to go, especially for say MCAS/Student portal and adding accounts.

It would be great if students were automatically added and emailed instructions for the portal - with the ability to customise the message sent out.

Be great if we could filter parent MCAS accounts better.

 

So, far from a perfect system.

 

I've also had little to no problem with their support. When I phoned them up I rarely had to wait 10 minutes.

[dmj]

Obviously we had that major problem to do with Azure

 

On this: Bromcom did point out that this was a Microsoft capacity failure. Please remember that they have SLA contracts with Microsoft and get a good rebate in credits when things go awry (which, I hasten to add, they don't pass back to schools)

So whether the root cause analysis blames a third party or not, it's still Bromcoms failure in their setup.

Edited October 25, 2024 by dmj

[Bromcom_John]

Given Bromcom and Migration-X got a mention in the ESS email earlier in the thread, I thought it was worth explaining what Migration-X is, particularly as ESS have incorrectly claimed that it infringes their IP.

Migration-X is a new portal, see below, that uses a combination of Report Generator and APIs to automatically extract data from SIMS. It enables schools with their SIMS hosted by ESS to migrate to Bromcom, and as it uses ESS’ recommended methods for migrating data, they can switch with confidence knowing they’re not breaching their contract.

You can find out more on the Bromcom website

This is more about defending against an inaccurate statement than anything else though.

 

Additional edit - A colleague did just point out I ought to add the below for completeness. you never know who is watching.

Please read the next bit in your best hurried radio announcer at the end of an advert voice.

 

Note: Bromcom’s position on use of SIMS SQL backup and claim by ESS for infringement is as per Bromcom’s earlier statement that Bromcom “uphold, migrating to Bromcom via SQL backups from SIMS is safe, legal, and authorised, as well, and in the highly unlikely event ESS does take legal action against an education establishment that provides Bromcom with an SQL backup, we are offering indemnification against any legal costs (subject to terms and conditions). You can learn more here.

Edited October 25, 2024 by Bromcom_John

[DrCheese]

Haha, the cheek of it. Insisting that other companies stop using DB backups & when said companies go out of their way to write a method that uses public APIs and Report dumps, they STILL try and argue it's illegal.

 

That letter is nonsense. ESS need to understand that if their product was remotely decent they wouldn't need to resort to such bully boy tactics

[RootsSchImp]

ESS want to be careful sending long-winded legal threats to schools looking to buy other MIS systems, they could be misappropriating valuable Bromcom IP

[3s-gtech]

“Cease and desist, threatening our MIS customers with legal action is our modus operandi, and we will vigorously defend it!”

[Andrew_C]

It really does look like a lot of MIS providers are trying to portray themselves as the worst of the bunch.

[Ditto]

It really does look like a lot of MIS providers are trying to portray themselves as the worst of the bunch.

I think those remaining mostly silent are faring best.

[andy_b]

Finally, I have to ask that you confirm that the following instructions were followed when your data was migrated – please click here.

 

Anyone else had similar?

[supportman]

Bromcom have apparently come out with a new way of extracting the data.

 

So sad that they have to spend development time on this, but at least its done now.

[casa]

Today our local LA refused to migrate our on premises Sims that was running on Windows 10 to a new VM on our server 2022, we have tried to get ParentPay/ESS involved in this migration but initially all very Roy Keane about it, then after a couple of weeks complete silence. But I will hammer away at it until we are told forget about the Sims roadmap and ignore everything on it and just get on the cloud.

Casa

Edited November 11, 2024 by casa