Trouble at RM?

[featured_spectre]

ahhh that would be who I am confusing them with they Psydii, my apologies!

[GrumbleDook]

Most of us have seen or heard of good and bad experiences from large firms, whether RM, Capita, Serco, Pearson, etc, etc ... there are lots of business practices that firms use which are not nice for the individual but are good for the firm ... and the ethics behind that is something for lengthy discussion around capitalism, the role of unions, the state funding of corporate entities compared to state ownership ...

 

As for what RM do for schools ... I have asked several times if people can come up with good and flexible solutions where schools can replace RM (or other middleware) for vanilla systems and not increase the amount of support that is required (or if they do it does not end up costing more than the middleware solutions themselves), for examples of how this can be replicated by using Open Source offerings ... and also making sure it does not negatively impact on the educational use of IT in a school.

 

Still waiting ...

 

The hardware is pretty good ... it does tend to be longer lasting than Dell / HP kit in schools because it is built to take a certain amount ... but the need for that will vary from school to school ... and in some schools they are still not robust enough. This is not the fault of RM, but the fact that there is a *lot* of damage in some schools. Most of the time when I hear schools moaning about RM costing too much it is because they have not given a good description of what they want or need and so get a slightly inflated option, which I also see being done by a good half dozen other firms. I am not saying it is right, but to single out one firm is not fair ... and when someone who is reasonably knowledgable questions the quote (or clarifies the requirements) then they do come back with pretty good offers ... and I know of other firms who still try to pull a fast one.

 

RM will not go out of business ... they are going to struggle and have to change / adapt ... but they have done that before. They did it to take on BSF bids and become an MSP ... they have done it before ... they will do it again. Other firms which could not adapt will get snapped up by those who can, or will go under and the firms left will take their business. For schools ... if CC3/4 was to disappear, would schools find it easy to move on? I think they could ... but it would be a struggle ... would have a huge cost implication ... will result in problems in the classroom ... and so whilst people might want RM the firm to curl up and die ... it is not a good thing for schools. They are not a monopoly ... but their user base is so large that it will be an issue if they suddenly went ... but I don't think that would happen anyway.

[synaesthesia]

Quite frankly they've been such a presence in schools for so many years now it would be a terrible thing if they disappeared. Besides which, it's not like anyone is *forced* to use their hardware or services. I've had hardware prices from RM that were miles below anyone else, and levels of service I would only expect from a small company. I've also seen the flipside on both of those.

Let's look at it this way. Whilst RM is in existence, schools have more choice and someone else to keep competition up. That means lower prices from other providers.

[Tallwood_6]

As others have said this is nothing new RM are simply battening down the hatches as the along with the death of BSF they know full well that school budgets are getting tighter and i think a refocus on core business will benefit all.

Despite my grievances with RM i wouldnt wish job loses on anyone in this current climate.

[PiqueABoo]

I followed this story and the share price dive over the summer and first part of the autumn term, and yes it feels like ancient history now. Only point I haven't read here that was in some RM official statement they said they'd be keeping in-house h/w production under review, see how the market goes, because of the overheads for that capability... wasn't sure whether that meant servers, workstations, or both. Also a couple of financial analyst articles last year suggested RM were a little slow reacting to the brave new world , which considering all that BSF/HT/other money went away the *previous* summer seemed like screamingly obvious fair comment.

 

I have asked several times if people can come up with good and flexible solutions where schools can replace RM (or other middleware) for vanilla systems and not increase the amount of support Still waiting ...

 

One answer, possibly *the answer* is that "people" definitely can, but if you're like me then such solutions are part of what pays the wages and there is no incentive to just give away a serious investment in time/expertise to your competitors. Ignoring that, there is still project documentation/maintenance/support/updates which for a "good and flexible" solution would be massive undertaking. The odd freebie app is one thing, a decent freebie off-the-shelf *system* is another league.

 

if CC3/4 was to disappear, would schools find it easy to move on? I think they could ... but it would be a struggle ... would have a huge cost implication

 

Agree that it's inconceivable but since we're playing....

 

In both cases you would likely be able to get support from somewhere, systems will mostly keep working and the impact would be gradual. CC3 has gotten by for 2 -3 years without any RM development, just MS sec-fixes, which aren't that hard to do i.e. would carry on working until schools would have had move to something else regardless. CC4 is the one dependant on lots of proprietory RM code and although it's largely stable now, if that code or the database at it's heart breaks, then I think you and any support provider could be in serious trouble... but I think the majority would likely keep working well enough for long enough for changes to happen as part of the natural system life-cycle i.e. not an expensive, abrupt change.

 

The eventual, significant loss would be the relative consistency we get across all those CCx systems... might not be the most brilliant standard possible, but they're OK and a world away from the worst I've seen in "vanilla" land... there are exceptions, but hell tends to be other folk's d-i-y systems.