Jump to content

Problems this morning with Bromcom?

mitchell1981

By mitchell1981
in MIS Systems

 Share

Recommended Posts

mthomas08

mthomas08

Posted
Posted
19 hours ago, DrCheese said:

I do think the DFE is going to either come down hard on MIS vendors to insist on a certain amount of uptime, or start forcing schools to have backup methods of accessing basic student information digitality/emailing parents

 

DfE needs to come down hard on IT overall, not just about the MIS systems.

 

How many of us could potentially be crippled as to something simple..  a server failure.. a backup failure...   we get run over and are things documented..  are the servers or switches hanging on a knife edge.. what about broadband... filtering... firewalls..

 

I find this Bromcom reliability a headache.. but I do feel for the technical team facing this nightmare.

 

On another note: A rival MIS sent me an email today. Completely attacking Bromcom.. I thought it had been worded by a disgruntled customer.. but nope.. an actual rival to Bromcom. Completely unprofessionally written. Not a company I have experience with.. not one of the big 3.. which might explain.....  the wording............  

  • Like 2
Jaan

Jaan

Posted
Posted
11 minutes ago, TheCookieMonster said:

I don't know about others but it seems to be looking much better. 

 

did you just jinx it!

  • Like 1
Olliedawg

Olliedawg

Posted
Posted
Just now, mthomas08 said:

 

DfE needs to come down hard on IT overall, not just about the MIS systems.

 

How many of us could potentially be crippled as to something simple..  a server failure.. a backup failure...   we get run over and are things documented..  are the servers or switches hanging on a knife edge.. what about broadband... filtering... firewalls..

 

I find this Bromcom reliability a headache.. but I do feel for the technical team facing this nightmare.

 

On another note: A rival MIS sent me an email today. Completely attacking Bromcom.. I thought it had been worded by a disgruntled customer.. but nope.. an actual rival to Bromcom. Completely unprofessionally written. Not a company I have experience with.. not one of the big 3.. which might explain.....  the wording............  

When I first started working in Education 4 1/2 years ago - i was surprised that the DfE don't do any checks on School IT

TheCookieMonster

TheCookieMonster

Posted
Posted
18 minutes ago, mthomas08 said:

 

On another note: A rival MIS sent me an email today. Completely attacking Bromcom.. I thought it had been worded by a disgruntled customer.. but nope.. an actual rival to Bromcom. Completely unprofessionally written. Not a company I have experience with.. not one of the big 3.. which might explain.....  the wording............  

Oh go on then.. what did it say?

HC_Netman

HC_Netman

Posted
Posted
15 minutes ago, TheCookieMonster said:

Oh go on then.. what did it say?

Think I got the same one. Quite enjoyed it. Certainly made me look up the company and find out more so worked as a marketing tool.

 

Not sure they were talking about Bromcom for sure but they did say it rhymed with WrongCom 😅

  • Like 1
  • Haha 3
psydii

psydii

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, mthomas08 said:

 

DfE needs to come down hard on IT overall, not just about the MIS systems.

 

How many of us could potentially be crippled as to something simple..  a server failure.. a backup failure...   we get run over and are things documented..  are the servers or switches hanging on a knife edge.. what about broadband... filtering... firewalls..

 

I find this Bromcom reliability a headache.. but I do feel for the technical team facing this nightmare.

 

On another note: A rival MIS sent me an email today. Completely attacking Bromcom.. I thought it had been worded by a disgruntled customer.. but nope.. an actual rival to Bromcom. Completely unprofessionally written. Not a company I have experience with.. not one of the big 3.. which might explain.....  the wording............  

I miss Becta FITS being a thing that those going through the NPQH used to learn about.

 

 

  • Like 1
pete

pete

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, mthomas08 said:

 

DfE needs to come down hard on IT overall, not just about the MIS systems.

 

How many of us could potentially be crippled as to something simple..  a server failure.. a backup failure...   we get run over and are things documented..  are the servers or switches hanging on a knife edge.. what about broadband... filtering... firewalls..

 

If you're on speaking terms with the IT at the school down the road (and you're reasonably certain they're not muppets) ask them to be a critical friend.  Suggest you eyeball each other's stuff and ask awkward questions and pick holes in the "we've always done X" justifications.

 

Don't wait for the DfE to get their backside in gear.

 

There are people on here who offer an informal (you're local and you understand you owe us a favour) or formal (your school pays the day rate - it's not cheap) audit service.

  • Like 1
DrBeaker

DrBeaker

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, mthomas08 said:

 

DfE needs to come down hard on IT overall, not just about the MIS systems.

 

How many of us could potentially be crippled as to something simple..  a server failure.. a backup failure...   we get run over and are things documented..  are the servers or switches hanging on a knife edge.. what about broadband... filtering... firewalls.....

 

Too much money being spent on the wrong things though and not on the right things like infrastructure.

e.g.

No point having a brand new car, with all the cutting-edge tech etc. if you're simply driving on the same roads with the same potholes, because the money that should have been used to to fix them was used to buy the new car instead.

 

 

3 hours ago, Olliedawg said:

When I first started working in Education 4 1/2 years ago - i was surprised that the DfE don't do any checks on School IT

 

3-4x Ofsted inspections, not ONCE have they spoke with, asked IT about anything to do with the IT provision of the schools during any of those inspections.

 

Once had the Ofsted ask me about a "'Teams meeting' - to do with the Head's PA emailing the governors to ask about a meeting. NOTHING ... AT.... ALL to do with IT support, but it involved a computer, which did make me question the basic competency of the Ofsted inspection team.

 

 

  • Like 1
psydii

psydii

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, DrBeaker said:

 

 

Once had the Ofsted ask me about a "'Teams meeting' - to do with the Head's PA emailing the governors to ask about a meeting. NOTHING ... AT.... ALL to do with IT support, but it involved a computer, which did make me question the basic competency of the Ofsted inspection team.

 

 

Consider that a win. Last time ofsted were in I fixed the coffee urn that we'd put in their room. It didn't even have a plug!

  • Haha 1
supportman

supportman

Posted
Posted

Trying to put a positive spin on it.... This may actually be a good thing for performance which we have complained about for many years. I remember there was a idea on the ideas portal with hundreds of votes to improve the responsiveness.

 

We all warned about this happening when they took on Northern Irish schools but it seemed Bromcom were a little deaf in creating those extra resources and making the system more efficient. I've always worried in particular about all the syncs and long lists the system uses.

 

Now we've had all the start of term drama the system is actually much quicker than before. Hopefully this means a fast responsive system in the future. 

 

Using it this morning has been a dream so far. Quicker than ever before.

  • Haha 1
synaesthesia

synaesthesia

Posted
Posted (edited)
21 minutes ago, Rob_D said:

 

Isn't Bromcom famously litigious?

Some of their staff would probably sue their catering company for swapping out their lunch Heinz Beans for Branston.

Allegedly.

 

 

 

* disclaimer - the contents of this post are satirical in nature and may not represent the truth

* this post does not reflect the opinions of anyone else in my or any other organisation

* 42

 

Amusingly this also now features on El Reg.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/10/bromcom_fail/

Edited by synaesthesia
  • Haha 2
k-strider

k-strider

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, supportman said:

Trying to put a positive spin on it.... This may actually be a good thing for performance which we have complained about for many years. I remember there was a idea on the ideas portal with hundreds of votes to improve the responsiveness.

 

We all warned about this happening when they took on Northern Irish schools but it seemed Bromcom were a little deaf in creating those extra resources and making the system more efficient. I've always worried in particular about all the syncs and long lists the system uses.

 

Now we've had all the start of term drama the system is actually much quicker than before. Hopefully this means a fast responsive system in the future. 

 

Using it this morning has been a dream so far. Quicker than ever before.

Yes i agree hopefully this will be the issue that makes them stand up and notice the moans about performance.... because actually (not come from SIMS) CMIS then Progresso/Cloudschool i actually realy like Bromcom as a MIS - yes there are quirks and things i dont like but on the whole its actually very good....

  • Like 1
mikes

mikes

Posted
Posted
On 09/09/2025 at 13:44, Olliedawg said:

When I first started working in Education 4 1/2 years ago - i was surprised that the DfE don't do any checks on School IT

 

Yeah I worked for an ISP's tech support in 2007 and it was ran like a shambles, so I quit that out of frustration, then when I got the school job I thought "great, there will be structure, procedures, I'll know exactly what to do according to the rules" - all that good stuff.   Only to be shocked when I came in and found out you're pretty much on your own, each school has to pretty much sort its own IT out - no government set OS GPO's, procedures, custom OS build nothing.

 

Also I find the problem with cloud, it's all well and good saying "properly done cloud allows you to spin up extra VM's etc", but basically you are reliant on the third party to do things right - how often will they do it right? We can see from Bromcom, Classcharts etc - they will only do things well when there's absolutely no other choice.

Running things local -  I knew when things would update, change, potential problems might occur because I patched it so would be aware.  Now with everything cloud, things will change, break, go wrong all of the time. It's at the point now where I've told users not to bother seeing me with software problems because I can't do anything about them (they will still whine of course) - try again tomorrow because maybe it'll be fixed.

 

Though saying all that we are using Arbor as our MIS and it hasn't hitched since we came back so there is that !

  • Like 3
Dr_Zeux

Dr_Zeux

Posted
Posted (edited)
9 minutes ago, kennysarmy said:

 

 

 

Funny that their status says it was 100% UP yesterday, the 10th of Sept.

 

https://status.bromcomcloud.com/

 

:D

Yeah right, when we were informed by Bromcom helpdesk (I have it in writing on my case) that there was very slow performance between 08.45 - 09.15 - which incidentally affected our school.  That would give the impression that they're deliberately manipulating their statistics, or the team who run the status page genuinely didn't know their system was down - either way, totally unprofessional and misleading...

Edited by dbluston
  • Like 3
mavhc

mavhc

Posted
Posted

So the architecture of their brand new cloud first system is: run a load of windows servers in a domain and an mssql database for each school?

  • Like 1
  • Haha 1

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share
Go to topic listing


×
×
  • Create New...