Hidden costs when moving MIS

[5nowman]

3 minutes ago, BKGarry said:

For SIMS it depends on the size of your Database, most secondaries require full SQL licensing due to it's size.

 

Wonde does not need a dedicated machine if you have a cloud based MIS

Ah even for SIMS ?

 

I am getting different answers from different people.

I have been told that for WONDE.. even if SIMS is in the cloud you still need a a machine to run the local stuff.

 

 

[5nowman]

29 minutes ago, Chris_Cook said:

There's also the costs of having a DB + Server admin as well as an MIS expert on staff/support contract. Its much better to let the experts run it, and figure out how to make it fast.

 

Also, how many on-site MIS support 2fa and modern levels of security? The costs and risks associated with cyber security are also there as well.

 

Net2 will work mostly offline unless you are doing any triggers or door openings over the network. As long as the host is secure and properly backed up, then it doesn't necessarily need a full on server. Plus there are other options for hosting VMs these days like NAS boxes, cloud, etc. Some of the more modern systems like the unifi access could run their controller on the same system as the network controller.

1 form entry primary school. wireless is ruckus with controller.

 

do you need 2 servers now?!?! is it not good enough to backup the vm - say hyperv V M?

[BKGarry]

28 minutes ago, 5nowman said:

Ah even for SIMS ?

 

 

SIMS is not technically a cloud MIS, so if your SIMS is hosted then you will need an install because of the way SIMS works. 

[localzuk]

15 hours ago, 5nowman said:

1 form entry primary school. wireless is ruckus with controller.

 

do you need 2 servers now?!?! is it not good enough to backup the vm - say hyperv V M?

 

I'd say you've needed 2 servers for at least a decade - as so much critical tech runs via your network. Having a single box means you risk downtime if it fails. Having 2 provides resilience. Which is why cloud tech is so useful, especially for primary schools that don't have the funds to run such setups.

 

16 hours ago, 5nowman said:

Ah even for SIMS ?

 

I am getting different answers from different people.

I have been told that for WONDE.. even if SIMS is in the cloud you still need a a machine to run the local stuff.

 

SIMS is not a cloud MIS - it isn't SaaS. It may be hosting on a cloud system (PaaS), and remote access provided via Remote Desktop or similar, but that doesn't make it a cloud MIS. Until it is entirely web based, it should be classed as an old-style MIS. For SIMS? Yes, you need a server for Wonde. But I'd say that its time to start looking at more modern options. When I moved my last employer from SIMS + its various add-ons to make it all functional, we saved 10s of thousands each year by moving to a true cloud MIS (which had most of those add-ons built in).

[Primus]

I think you might need to go back to the drawing board with this one.

 

There's a reason SIMS' market share is now below 50% and dropping...

[mavhc]

If everything is in the cloud you now have many more points of failure, routers, modems, multiple km long cables that live in the scary outside world, random people DDoSing other random people, it's Monday and your cloud service isn't actually scalable, it's Monday and they decided to break everything because they're not experts in cloud stuff either, there's a new exploit and everyone on the planet can try to attack your data instead of people just in your building, the company goes bankrupt and all the servers turn off, someone steals their domain, CSRF or the other 1000 ways websites can be insecure

[localzuk]

49 minutes ago, mavhc said:

If everything is in the cloud you now have many more points of failure, routers, modems, multiple km long cables that live in the scary outside world, random people DDoSing other random people, it's Monday and your cloud service isn't actually scalable, it's Monday and they decided to break everything because they're not experts in cloud stuff either, there's a new exploit and everyone on the planet can try to attack your data instead of people just in your building, the company goes bankrupt and all the servers turn off, someone steals their domain, CSRF or the other 1000 ways websites can be insecure

Which is more likely? A company offering a cloud MIS not having expertise in running a cloud MIS, or a school offering fairly low wages having an expert in running an MIS?

Expand that for cyber security. For resilience as well.

 

The reality is the opposite of the things you wrote - you are far more likely to have downtime with an onsite system than a cloud one.

[mthomas08]

1 hour ago, mavhc said:

If everything is in the cloud you now have many more points of failure, routers, modems, multiple km long cables that live in the scary outside world, random people DDoSing other random people, it's Monday and your cloud service isn't actually scalable, it's Monday and they decided to break everything because they're not experts in cloud stuff either, there's a new exploit and everyone on the planet can try to attack your data instead of people just in your building, the company goes bankrupt and all the servers turn off, someone steals their domain, CSRF or the other 1000 ways websites can be insecure

I wouldn't say things are better or worse with more Cloud hosted - our experience.

 

ISP is fantastic by a mile and a half compared to the previous company.

Filtering is worse off since we had no choice but to migrate to their Cloud based system.

Cloud MIS had unrelaible start with performance issues - weekly. In the last 6 months, it has been a lot better even compared to an internally hosted SIMs. And the ONLY reason staff didn't notice downtime and problems with SIMs, was me doing the work at weekends and evenings. I do not miss the emergency patches from Attendance/Data Manager. If I did these during working hours, SIMs would hit a very low reliability % compared to our early days of Bromcom. This doesn't even include the performance issues or random MEMORY crashes staff suffered - which SIMs tried.. and tried for about 4 years to fix.

 

My faith in Cloud used to be pretty low... but with experience.. it has improved a lot. I'd say it's only a step away from being more Cloud. The big difference is me not putting in extra unpaid hours to make things work.

Edited March 25, 2025 by mthomas08

[PotNoodleTech]

23 minutes ago, localzuk said:

Which is more likely? A company offering a cloud MIS not having expertise in running a cloud MIS, or a school offering fairly low wages having an expert in running an MIS?

Expand that for cyber security. For resilience as well.

 

The reality is the opposite of the things you wrote - you are far more likely to have downtime with an onsite system than a cloud one.

 

Hmm I am not so sure your right.

 

I've had more dowtime with cloud stuff in general than I ever had with my own fileservers.  MS was down last week, SIMS down, classhcarts down, there are constant issues with cloud services almost every day of every week.  I recon Mav's right.

[dmj]

23 hours ago, 5nowman said:

 

Please correct me if I am wrong. SIMS runs on the free version of SQL no?

Wonde needs a dedicated machine.

door entry systems that link to net2 need a local version of software installed. 

Ideally running on a server

Windows AD if running locally - inc. Group policies etc.

server file storage.

 

Would it not become more expensive to have all cloud AND server of some kind locally instead of a local server more beefed up?

This is a curious post not like an argument or anything as I am open to cloud if cost justifies it

 

5nowman

The point I was making is that with SIMS you need windows clients and the surrounding infra. With a web based MIS you can use much cheaper clients with just a web browser: ChromeOs or any of the other managed linuxes.

[mavhc]

1 hour ago, localzuk said:

Which is more likely? A company offering a cloud MIS not having expertise in running a cloud MIS, or a school offering fairly low wages having an expert in running an MIS?

Expand that for cyber security. For resilience as well.

 

The reality is the opposite of the things you wrote - you are far more likely to have downtime with an onsite system than a cloud one.

Depends on the system of course, but let's go with SIMS vs Bromcom

 

Why will SIMS fail, a) bad update b) the sims server fails, c) the network fails (but that'll break everything anyway

Why will Bromcom fail a) bad update, b) Microsoft runs out of servers, c) any of my previously mentioned 20 issues, d) they sell it to 100 more schools and it turns out something doesn't scale that well, e) your browser updates and something's broken now

 

By fail I mean no one can use it, not that someone used the software to input something stupid, or it crashed

 

[5nowman]

2 hours ago, dmj said:

The point I was making is that with SIMS you need windows clients and the surrounding infra. With a web based MIS you can use much cheaper clients with just a web browser: ChromeOs or any of the other managed linuxes.

Your point is exactly why I am here. There is no one solution that fits all and I appreciate your view. I gotta look at Interactive board resources, what applications they use and PCs / Laptops. Lots to consider. Thank you and all though for this thread.

[BKGarry]

The big thing I did when we were evaluating MIS was I left the actual decision to the Leadership Team. I presented the costs, with keeping FMS (thank you LEA Finance team for that) and let them make the decision on functionality, disruption etc. Your main one is it really should be the leadership and admin staff who make the decision, we can advise but ultimately the decision would be theirs.

[5nowman]

2 minutes ago, BKGarry said:

The big thing I did when we were evaluating MIS was I left the actual decision to the Leadership Team. I presented the costs, with keeping FMS (thank you LEA Finance team for that) and let them make the decision on functionality, disruption etc. Your main one is it really should be the leadership and admin staff who make the decision, we can advise but ultimately the decision would be theirs.

This is SOOO right! Let them lead the internal discussion. You just make it technically happen. Head > Dept. Heads> Leadership > Staff.

[mthomas08]

19 hours ago, mavhc said:

Depends on the system of course, but let's go with SIMS vs Bromcom

 

Why will SIMS fail, a) bad update b) the sims server fails, c) the network fails (but that'll break everything anyway

Why will Bromcom fail a) bad update, b) Microsoft runs out of servers, c) any of my previously mentioned 20 issues, d) they sell it to 100 more schools and it turns out something doesn't scale that well, e) your browser updates and something's broken now

 

I can't speak for others.

 

SIMs: Network. Server. SIMs Solus. SQL. SIMs Client. PC.

I'd say this had poor reliability for the high end users (admin). Daily crashes were normal. Performance was awful.

Emergency patches = downtime plus may not fix the problem.

Updates = downtime + more emegency patches and updates to fix previous updates (this started to become more and more common)

Server upgrades

Server migrations

Backups

 

Constantly trying to resolve the random RAM crashes that SIMs denied existed for about 18 months.. then finally admitted it. Constantly browsing EduGeek and Google to see if other schools faced the same issues (they did) and troubleshooting. Performance updates on the servers. Running scripts to resolve the data. Running SIMs tools. Trying every possible solution I find on Google by random Joe. Upgrading the PCs in attendance (one of many), new RAM.. better SSDs.. better processors... brand new machines... sending SIMs the logs... then trying to log even more...  screen recording.. I had around 1000 emails recorded.. I dealt with about 3 different core developers... (the ones you rarely get to talk to).. server reboots..

 

Bromcom Cloud: Bromcom. Microsoft. Internet. Network. Browser related.

No updates. No patches. No scripts. No messing around with the PCs.

No servers. No upgrades. No backups. NO SQL licenses. No server licenses.

 

I don't think they are truly fair comparisons..  I joined here and no one knew how to manage SIMs. I did.. because I've dealt with it since before .net framework came along. I made SIMs reliable. I gave up my free time to make it better. Bromcom doesn't random crash like SIMs. The performance related issues seem to be resolved and the last 6 months have been down to Azure issues (which also impacted a few other portals). I'd like to think they are getting better and more reliable.

 

Last 12 months of Bromcom has been better for us Vs 3 months SIMs.

 

Now course.. Bromcom during the 1st year = the worst. Major performance issues. Downtime every few weeks.

BUT.. Bromcom in the last year = serious reliability.

[mavhc]

But that's because sims is crap, not because it's locally hosted.

 

On the plus side when it's remotely hosted they're more likely to fix the bugs

 

 

[5nowman]

TBH I had sims running on server 2019. Solus local.

Every workstation did the solus update perfectly.

Patches on the sims server were flawless.

 

The app itself has issues - we all know this but running locally it was fine. How much more are people paying for the cloud hosting? - guessing some put that in their TCO when comparing cloud / local install.

 

Have SIMS given a date as to when schools MUST move to cloud hosting?

 

Edited March 26, 2025 by 5nowman

[BKGarry]

I had no end of issues with SOLUS3 just not deploying to clients. It really didn't like laptops being offsite (with no VPN connection) coming in the next day, it would just not run!

[5nowman]

2 minutes ago, BKGarry said:

I had no end of issues with SOLUS3 just not deploying to clients. It really didn't like laptops being offsite (with no VPN connection) coming in the next day, it would just not run!

I can only imagine the stress. Lucky we only have sims on local desktops.... no offsite sims business.

[Bromcom_John]

Anecdotally I hear the "no longer need SOLUS" from prospects being one of the major silver linings for changing.
So definitely a hidden cost "benefit"

[mthomas08]

18 hours ago, BKGarry said:

I had no end of issues with SOLUS3 just not deploying to clients. It really didn't like laptops being offsite (with no VPN connection) coming in the next day, it would just not run!

You. Are. So. Lucky.

 

Solus/SIMs server did improve after I rebuilt it, then virtualised some time later - but the random SIMs client crashes didn't go away.. especially for attendance.

[PotNoodleTech]

I never actually used solus - was still deploying patches the old fashioned way.  100% reliable (er...well always had the 1 random pc that didnt updat properly so 98% reliable i guess)

Went from that to Connected so no more patches just worse perormance and reliability and usability overall.