TheScarfedOne

A departure from some of my more recent posts about System Centre - now time to concentrate on more of the Consultancy and Technology Evangelism Im also involved with. This time, I was very fortunate to be invited to the Capita SIMS LA Conference, held at Alton Towers. Thanks must go to Cath Lane and her team, as well as Phil Neal and the Product Managers who spared their time to talk to me. This is the first of a selection of posts which will appear this week discussing the themes of the event. So, on to the actual event, which centred around the way in which the Schools ecosystem is changing. Even Capita (who I know some of my audience will suggest otherwise) appreciate the need to better understand the market - and what we need. IT as a technology, as a platform for use in Schools is changing. Schools are very data rich - but often are not in a position to understand, filter or use this data properly. This is where SIMS, and other Capita products and services come in. Phil Neal spoke on stage about the demanding competitive landscape which exists, both in terms of product and also the ancilliary services such as LA support services. Again - I know some of my audience wont believe that the MIS market place could be seen as competitive, but the simple truth is it is. The Academy system has changed the ecosystem - Schools and Colleges have a choice. There are more developers and products on the market, and there is a greater awareness of them. I think a lot of this has to do with the changing professionals in Schools, and groups such as Edugeek. There are more decision makers - no longer is it an LA decision which MIS, or other systems a School uses. Schools in isolation are making this decision, although - that being said - there are also Federations of Schools choosing a product or service. Software and support providers are having to change the way they market themselves and their products - to make themselves understood to a different audience. The move to the cloud also is having an impact. Product launches such as the competitive Serco Progresso raise the conversation "is there going to be a Cloud SIMS". Despite the bleak outlook when the Academy system started, Capita have been making gains in 2011/12 of roughly 50 schools. They also won Norfolk LA, and that is despite the concern of LAs "loosing control" of their Schools. The change to Academies has brought on its challenges. Academies have to go to market to asses what is available to choose what is needed for them. Converted academies are doing well, sponsored academies less so - as they tend to be groups or adopt whatever the sponsor is using. LA tenders are progressing, and there have been gains such as the Norfolk LA gain earlier. The new DfE framework brings its own challenges, the problem is that the tender can be all about the terms and conditions rather than the functionality and software. This is where the definition of core and non core models is important. The staggering truth there is that according to the framework, Exams and Upgrades are not part of the core, while cashless management is. Go figure?! So, in short, if you are a School or LA tendering - make sure you check carefully what components you want/expect to be included in your costs, or you risk getting stung! After the demise of BECTA, some may see it as no surprise that there is also no mention of parental engagement. If you are a School or LA who has rolled this out already, or has plans to do so (bear in mind that this is still part of Ofsted monitoring and evaluation) - you need to check carefully that you include this too. Capita have understood one clear thing from the community - and that is the quality of their communications with people on the ground. Their surveys of the user group showed some interesting results. Quality of training materials and Uptake of SIMS in the Classroom - key drivers were varied. There is going to be a lot of work taking place to improve this soon. There has been limited takeup Discover and Solus 3 - but those where it has been implemented, it has taken off. Discover is changing the market place. Whole industry around developing aspects for Discover. Also questioned was whether support to schools was direct or via LA. So - what is changing soon? Learning Gateway is due to have extensive developments, and now has a new Product Manager. The first big change is to add data collection sheets. The second will be a complete re-write of the "person webpart" - which is responsible for the old style Student and Staff details pages. T4 is dead as a product. T6 now has all the functionality, and the Timetable printing functionality is all embedded in the main SIMS.net product. Finally, you can say goodbye to this relic of SIMS. FMS has document management and cost centre manager permissions. Auditing reports and specific reports for Academies is also now included. This was one of the big criticisms of the product. Finally - and Phil was very proud to announce this - FMS is now Financial Authority Accredited. In Touch is being revitalised as a product. There seems to be limited awareness of this nationwide. I guess, in part, this is due to the plethora of competitive products such as Groupcall, Teachers2Parents etc. However, ask youself this, why use these if the functionality can be "there" in SIMS. Anyway - coming soon to it are improved alerting and automated notifications. And finally from Phil's stage section was another bit of pride for more awards - Finalist for BETT 2012 and Winner of ERA for innovation. Not bad for a years work!

Interesting... I keep this lot out of the main image, and let SCCM put them all on (including the AppV framework) at task sequence time...

SAN definiately for central VM storage. Also, why not use HyperV for your platform - which has the live move etc which you have to pay for in VMWare. There is some info on this, and links over on the my Blog and the Microsoft Schools Blog too...

Over on my blog I did a run through of the 2007 process, and am working on a 2012 version. My blog.... EduGeek.net - TheScarfedOne - Blogs

Good work ZH. Getting some .js errors relating to other api's - Facebook and Ad networks mainly - only from filtered connections...

This all looks fine to me, and not dis-similar to what I set up last year. Some bits that may help you... 1. Microsoft Schools Blog - some posts from me on there, and also there is an e-book from one of our friends at another school on getting HyperV running in Clustered form 2. Blogs on here - again, some from me - and there are a few other members too If you need anything, feel free to PM me or I'll now be keeping an eye on this thread

Ive done something very similar this year. Upgraded through virtualising. Gone from 6 server to 4 physical - which run 30 between them. So.... increased service provision, but less cost. There is info over on my blog about this, cross posted to the Microsoft schools blog. Its more than you need to do, but the principals are the same.

Get Forefront for Lync. You can do keyword filtering. Make sure you have enabled the monitoring/recording feature. Watch out - if you want to do two servers, you need to go Enterprise, which is less cheap. Just set this up myself. More advice from other users - @EduTech and @Ric_ and @Domino who are other users I believe

There is a big item about this on Channel 4 now.

+1 for TMG/ISA here. Use it to publish Exchange, Sharepoint, and a load of other web services too...

Blimey - theres a blast from the past! Yes, you are right - the LANID is from the good old DOS days, and as far as I know is now retired. @vikpaw or @PhilNeal can you confirm?

If you are looking at Thin Client and Remote Computing, you may want to keep an eye on mine too EduGeek.net - TheScarfedOne - Blogs where Ive talked about our setup - and there is a forthcoming post on the MS Schools Blog too at Microsoft UK Education - Blogs - Schools blog there are a few others there worth a look

Ooooooh matron LOL You do like living dangerously @EduTech...

The schema mods for 2012 are the same as 2007. And... if you look behind the scenes of 2012 - there is a lot of the 2007 stuff there. Its not too bad - just the upgrade stuff is bugging me. The blogs ive been doing cover 2007, but the concepts are the same - and oddly, from some of the work ive been doing so far - you will find a lot of the same screens once you sus the new "Office 2010" menu format!

Yep, my TMG logs show regular loss of connectivity most evenings. AFAIK, there is a lot of overnight maintenance going on - I will try and get some more info again and post...

Id also check maintenance windows with your school ISP. I know Ive fallen foul of this one before...

You need to be careful of the rules for coursework here. Staff shouldnt really have write access to areas which have coursework. It has been discussed elsewhere on the forums too a number of times...

Not afaik

Oooh.... someone called??!! Anything I can do to help?

You also need to look at AAM, Alternate Access Mapping, to allow Sharepoint to deal with internal and external urls

Part of the options in the MSP are to allow removal of any previous version. Ive used this before successfully. It should do the trick for you.

Yep - youve cracked both my bugs at once. There is one more bit to test... making sure that if it is currently a holiday, that it still works. will know that in a few weeks time. Cheers - great work!

I think youve cracked it. If the user is in the admin group, it gets the unlimited time now, rather than needing to be done by abr. Cheers :-)

Same... there was three other EduGeeks there too...

Any further news on this one?