tombruton

Don't know if this is still an issue for you guys but the most reliable way to do this is to remap the s drive I have a script which does this, it also checks sims is closed and opens Sims up telling them which school they are connected to. If you are interested I can post a link to this script on my website

We would need to setup a data sharing agreement with them to give them access and I can't see any reason to justify this. We would also need to give them access to our server which would mean putting them in a group where they could access our servers

I didn't know we had our IP based CCTV systems serviced annually. Talking to the technicians at each of the sites none of them have ever been aware of them actually doing it. BTW we set our own passwords to the cameras and software and don't have a data sharing agreement with them. We also use vlans, sticky ports and our cabs are in there own rooms which are locked and the cabs are locked. So they definitely are not messing about with them without us knowing. This has come up due to a new site and a guy coming to service them and me asking a few questions. Doesn't come out of the IT budget. Just seems like a waste to me My questions are 1. What do they actually do 2. Does anybody else have there CCTV serviced 3. What sort of cost is it you pay if so

as far as I know they are not a SIMS partner so that would be impossible with their system and pretty much all other systems I have seen. You can get all this data out of sims but you need to get all the CTF's and do about 10 reports manually. There are a few MIS's that you could pretty much rip everything out of the database then import directly, however most schools will be coming from SIM's in my experience. Depending on school size this would also be very slow on a pie, mainly due to the number of database writes.

Arbour's product does look interesting just never been able to see a working demo of it. I would look for references off other international schools as different providers have very different attitudes towards international schools. I work for ScholarPack and we are always happy to give out references, so you would hope other providers would be just as forthcoming.

I totally understand why you feel that way when I have heard about the shambles of alot of companies in the public sector. The Sony case is an interesting one because they did the hard stuff right for the most part and did the easy stuff wrong. However a cloud based MIS if setup in the right way should not be vulnerable in that way. However nothing is impossible and other things could take the service down. Sony was a high target for many reasons including PCI, political issues, corporate espionage and many others. An MIS system is not such a target however this does not mean security should not be taken seriously. In my opinion schools should always speak to other schools and ask them what there experience has been. I know as a company we spend almost nothing on marketing the only public thing we do is the Bett show. We get over 90% of our school as recommendations from other schools and that is how we are growing. It is ensured our standards are high because we are building our business upon having a reputation for having the best product(including reliability in this because it can be the best product in the world but if you cant get to it it's useless) and support. Again you are totally correct humans are normally the main cause of security issues. This is why it is important companies train there staff about security most major attacks these days are on the back of social engineering, if you can stop this and flag this behavior you are going to be more secure as a company. The other issue is mis configuration or ineffective setup. This can usually be picked up by good pen testing not just running an automated scan, or putting a WAF on and thinking you are safe makes me cringe everytime. Especially as you can get though PCI DSS with known security flaws if you have a WAF. A company SHOULD have better resources to mitigate these threats than a school. Again my advice is really drill down into the company that is supplying your MIS ask them every question that is important to you. They should go out of there way to help you at this stage if not that will probably give an insight into there aftercare. Also they should be more than willing to do this as when they buy stuff they should be doing the same thing. After a few conversations you will soon be able to see what there knowledge and services are like. Again talk to other schools see what they are saying. Personally it is pretty rare I buy something in my personal or professional life without reading or getting reviews on that product. A good MIS will do that the advantage of a web based one is 100% reliability with redundancy. At the end of the day that is what you are paying for and that is what should be delivered. If a motherboard goes in a server fail-over should happen and as a school you should never notice. You get that included I have never seen a school system with multimaster servers im sure there is one out there but they are few and far between. You do an update on your school server it goes down you have no MIS till you fix it. If a cloud based system breaks the plus is its somebody elses problem the negative is you have no control over that. However we are back to square one is it a company you can trust. The smaller cloud based MIS providers are probably all outsourcing hosting, building a data center cost millions so smaller companies just cant afford it. Some are probably doing it better than others. with hosting you normally get what you pay for, from support up time guarantees, disaster plans (including nuclear strikes), support, auditing ability. I would never go with a data center that I couldn't visit and check things are being done well. Again its interrogating the company making sure you are going to get a good service from them. Also when it is business critical using multi vendors and risk assessing those vendors. Also making sure you are left flexible if you get bad service or unsustainable price hikes being able to move without it effecting your customers. All your points you raise are valid ones and ones I would be asking if I was buying an MIS personally. I would also be looking for schools that are using the product that are similure to the school I was buying an MIS for in size, type and structure.

You are very correct, it has to be paired with proper incremental upgrade/update management. This is also why it is a good idea for your dual location to be with a differently supplier. The odds of both companies going down on the same day is very unlikely. It would be amazing if it was just flicking a switch, however data transfer is never that fun, getting CTF info and the staff workforce census across is just the start. In my personal opinion a web based system with an awesome API is a great way to go for many schools, especially those that have technical people that want to write programs/scripts that utilise the schools data the way they want. Id say the only schools that would have a problem with cloud based system's is those with unreliable internet connection, because not being able to get at your data is not fun. Again with diagnostics a good API should give you a helpful response and should be easier to work with than directly with a database. I would say supplier hosting is good for everybody. It is the most efficient way, as you can have staff with server expertise for that exact setup and have a deep knowledge of the services its running and how it is setup. It also means you have a system that is far more efficient. Again as far as expertise goes you can use multiple database solutions such as pairing MYsql, with Lucence and Mongodb. Also the vender has control over security with people with expertise in that area. Rather than a windows server running in a school that might not of had a security patch or there is a zero day out, somebody has already managed to access your network they can then attack from that machine. If the vendor is running the server you have people dedicated to updating IDS,IPS's and making that network safe, keeping separate zones, normally running Linux servers which have much better track records for security than windows server, there are formal quality controls on how services are setup to prevent misconfiguration. Schools tend not to have the time, expertise or both to do this properly. The other argument is those that schools are low targets because of little to no finical incentive, they just hold data on children which is important to protect but not highly sort after unlike something like credit card details. So if you do risk analysis on that many would say its ok for schools to have so so security.

Full disclosure I work for ScholarPack a competing cloud based MIS. For a web based service to be down for a full day is just completely unacceptable. All web based systems should be hosted in a tier 3 data center, this means that redundancy is built into any servers hosted there. There should also be co-location so even if the whole data center goes down(very very very rare) the system still wont go down because it will auto fall over to the second location. The only time you should ever loose access to a cloud based MIS is if your internet goes down. Integrating with other systems should be super easy with a cloud based MIS, as its essentially a website, so with a decent API this should be mega easy. Security should be top notch to using things like oauth 2.

It would be possible to knock together an MIS in a few months that would work for a primary, the problem is, is the flexibility schools require, schools really are unique and all have different requirements. An MIS built in 6 months might be able to work for a single school but would have very limited functionality. As far as Data Models go I have never looked into SIMS data model so I cannot comment on it. However if the front end was user friendly I dont think end users would ever even think of asking about the data model. Full disclosure I work for an MIS company