matt40k

Sorry? You've lost me. The internet solely works on DNS, it doesn't use ARP\NetBIOS!! DNS is Step 2 in the Book of Technician right after networking. Having DNS issues would cause you to have all sorts of problems. It's like saying blaming Capita for not supporting XP after it goes EOL. How dare you @PhilNeal! Not allowing me to run my unsecure operating system!

We said that about SOLUS2 when it first came out (ok we didn't have Vista, but we had a butt load of problems with it).

This kinda reminds me of when people where moving to XP from 98. Everyone remembers 98 fondly... up until they start using it again after a few years of XP. Then they remember the problems. Hearing the words "digital signature" and "error" in the same convo still makes me twitch. - I want to say it's because your internet is flaky - but we both know it's because your hardcore

Remind me not to skip to the end of topics any more - it's gone from to

I think if they went down the process I suggested, you'll be surprised how much engagement happens. If we break away the legal barrier, more people would engage - especially if it gets them out of doing a full tender process! I personally have no issue inviting another supplier to present at the end of a meeting which has been heavy dominated by another supplier to talk about how they believe they can improve our systems. At least gets the dominate supplier thinking about how they can improve alot more! Pricing. Yer, it's a tough one, no one wants to be the one who goes, hey, you've been underpaying, now we're taking a larger slice of your budget. It's just, well, look at Bromcom public statement - http://www.bromcom.com/press/pdf/071209_Press.pdf - they claim Capita are overcharging schools by £75 million. I'm not say your wrong, or that two counter act each other, I'm sure you'll agree with the core message that public money is being wasted by lack of transparency. But the fact is despite being able to FOI request prices, I've only found two MIS providers listed on the G-Cloud. If suppliers believe pricing was truly an issue I would expect to see more suppliers on the G-Cloud and only operating via the G-Cloud. The G-Cloud by the way releases monthly reports of what everyone has purchased via the G-Cloud - Sales Information - G-CloudG-Cloud.

I don't think so, I'm saying it happens already, we just need to formalize the process and make it more transparent to allow the overall process to be more agile. So rather then it being a one-time activity, it's on going. So when engagement happens, this follows a formal process so that it can be audited as actually happening so OFT and suppliers are happy anti-competitive practices are in place. I'm not saying I would replace the tender process, I think we still need it there for when major events occur - such as electronic registration, VLE, parental engagement, Post-16 agenda, "big data". I just thing a more relax process would allow suppliers to improve more quickly without introducing costly red tape exercises - assuming suppliers are willing to accept negative feedback that is! Otherwise we'll just see more complains and more demands for expensive tendering.

I take it you haven't had the joy of tendering yet then @vikpaw. Asking for quotes isn't proper tendering. Proper tendering is expensive. You have a run a project over a number of months, engage with a wide range of your users and the marketplace. You have any idea how much it actually costs to fill a room of office staff, let alone headteachers! And this is just to demo'ing the solution, you've then got other checks that occur like vetting the company to ensure they aren't funded by crime or likely to go under, security assessment to ensure your data isn't going to end up on pastebin like Tesco customer data has. Then you've got the whole validation of the sales pitches - are their costings correct, can they actual migrate within 2 days, is the user interface so user friendly people can just pick it up or are you going to need loads of training. And, at the end of all this all you've got is a list of recommendation - the end users like these solutions and they aren't full of holes. You'll still find people aren't happy with your recommendations and you haven't even agreed to implement\buy anything!! So I can see how both parties aren't happy with the tender process!

With regards to the t-shirt comment, the idea was give people, like Graham, who have engaged with market and have taken feedback on board in hopes to improve the marketplace a way to visually show their effort. I'm sure anyone who invests the time and money in more official routes would be displaying the logo on their emails and website. I hope OFT, CMA and any other authority will acknowledge LAs\Schools ARE fully engaged with the market and that LAs not tendering for school MIS isn't because they are anti-competitive, but because no business case has present itself to warrant the cost of entering into the tendering process. I personally suspect if this was less of a legal issue, we'd see more transparently appearing and we'd see what engagement is actually happening then we could see how anti-competitive the School MIS market actually is.

Bah, I just wrote a essay reply and it's disappeared Crux was, tender process is flawed. It's more of a legal exercise then a common sense exercise. Ideally the feedback LAs\Academy Trust get from Schools regularly should be formalized and that should be the new more agile "tender" process. So when Census workshops happen, for example, the LA should tack on, hey, who's going to BETT (or whatever) and ask what they're looking for and help them find other suppliers to investigate then feedback to the LA who should work with the supplier to do a intro to the rest of the schools in the LA, then do a bit of validation\due diligence. Hopefully then when things like Capita MultiView appear on the market, people are looking at new MIS systems as well as bolt-ons rather then thinking ok maybe a new MIS system would be the best solution but not after the cost of tendering. Of course this will only work if the suppliers are ok with some feedback like your friendly user interface isn't user friendly, or it just simply costs too much, or we have high unemployment and we want to boost jobs locally where possible - ie outsourcing support to a company in London isn't an option. At least your work Graham will give a list of suppliers, so that's step one done and you don't have to worry about Google missing anyone off or the DfE for that matter!! If suppliers are honest and only list what areas they are really good at operating in then step two of filtering the list down can be done within an hour (once you've got the requirements of course!) PS: Who are those suppliers who aren't happy?

Oh indeed, it's basically slamming my whole industry, but I suspect education, particularly MIS systems, being so critical is a key part of it. I'm hoping they pick up on your MIS Challenge as it's a foot in the right direction, ok it's baby steps but Rome wasn't built in a day!

I read that (http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/market-studies/OFT1533.pdf) as a confirmation of @GREED #MISChallenge Worth highlighting the following before we jump to any conclusions.

My bad, missed it off the above list. I've already added it to the new version

Just to confirm the new features so far for the next release: Windows Trusted Authentication support Separated out UI into separate process - doesn't appear to freeze when waiting for the the SIMS Business Objects to load XLSX support - No longer using JET, it's now using the MS Excel Library Displays the school logo once logged on Built-in log viewer Built-in log submission (pending me getting a SSL certificate etc) Version checker Telephone support De-duplication Improved validation of input Default to using Excel spreadsheets PersonID - import based on the PersonID Extend UDF support (currently only single line text)

Cheers @vikpaw and your Mod #SKILLZ I personally don't see the #MISChallenge answering any security or due diligence questions, well unless any of them response particularly poorly!! I see it as a good starting point, a step 0, it's basically the scoping stage. It should give you a good idea who you want to engage with and you'll both a good idea what you're after. IE you're not after their IP, you just want to know where the emergency exits are and you're not being sizest by only asking them

By involved you mean buy\donate when it comes out as charity single, then yes, yes I will

TCO isn't just about direct costs like licensing, or hardware. It includes things like the time to update the system, not just you applying the update but how long it takes for that new feature to appear. A cloud based solution will be able to roll out new features a lot faster then traditional providers, just look Microsoft Office, how quickly new features are appearing. This is why I said it's hard to quantify the true TCO. It really needs to be done a detailed level, that's why I said I won't independently test memory savings in my own personal time as it doesn't provide it'll reduce the TCO. Really we need to boil the problem down to the core, what are the business requirements, how often to they change, how much is to do SaaS solution and how much would a SoSaaS solution. Not just in cost but in resources (ok, you can put a money value on this as well to a certain point), what is the true TCO, how can you prove good value and that it will benefit your core goals. IT is progressively moving forward and I think we agree SaaS is the way forward? Correct? Going slightly off topic, my only point is, in the UK MIS market, where changes is guaranteed which by all accounts agile\cloud ideals should be no1, no-one has yet stepped up - and that's my opinion. It's my challenge to the market. I want to see in @GREED #MISChallenge suppliers providing that Capita overcharges, that they can provide the same if not better system for less. Or if it's costs more, really see what spending that extra money will do to improve the education of children, like my son, because that is the core business requirement. At least that's my position and I hope, the rest of EduGeek. Ideally I'd like to see more choice, in the market. I'd like to see more transparency and honesty and I'd like the flexibility that it comes from that. I think we're heading in that direction what with the G-Cloud and if DfE steps up and forces something like SIF so the whole migration problem disappear - the MIS market would be in a lot healthier position. Anyway, sorry for going off topic.

I think the first post was excellent, posting in MIS section was perhaps not correct, it was let down by the first reply also that sent this really off topic. I agree with the core statement, non-cloud products don't work well in the cloud and they need to be completely re-written. Does anyone disagree? However we must except the bottom line is to decrease the total cost of ownership. This is why people are moving to the cloud. Period. How we prove that is difficult - especially in the context we find ourselves.

I think this might be worth splitting out perhaps into a separate thread, I'm very aware the topic is called ARBOR MIS and this certainly isn't limited to just one supplier!! Having said that I'm pretty sure @GREED will do a good job bring it all together in his #MISChallenge. Perhaps we'll raise it again once he's published? Far as Arbor goes, they state they have a API which can be used by third parties. @JamesWeatherill has kindly given me access and from what I've seen so far, I'm pretty confident I could extract pretty much anything from them and dump it into a local database. So from the point of due diligence, it's a step in the right direction - it's more of a do we need to export regularly and how frequently, or is the ability enough rather than a tick in the box.

He's got no choice but to finish it and to a high quality - he knows what happens to people who don't complete stuff for me!!

I'd be surprised if they don't at least part reply mate. I suspect everyones waiting for someone to set the standard - go on @PhilNeal, once again set the benchmark.

*Cough* SOLUS3 *Cough* - Sorry couldn't resist!

I assume this is for the OpenVPN they use for InTouch\hosted SLG. If your hosting SIMS locally on your hardware I wouldn't worry, the main SIMS system will be fine. It's just the OpenVPN client which they setup anyway and they'll be able to help when they remote in to set it up.

Depends who owns the servers - when a colocation provider goes under, the owner of the server has to prove they own the server before the data center releases the servers. If they rent, well I'd say you're pretty stuffed. I suspect if we're talking school data they might be bit more friendly about getting the data, but I would at least band together or behind an Academy Trust or LA. I think any good "cloud" provider would sign an agreement that they would at least let you get at the data - and remember to ensure the contract states the MIS provider will require your agreement before swapping providers! It's also worth checking out how many links they have in the chain, I mean if they rent servers off someone, who rents space off a data center - only one has to go belly up for this problem to occur! Alternative route is to have a way to backup your data to something like RackSpace Cloud Files which you can control (and is in UK) - ie its your API key. I suspect some cloud MIS providers wouldn't like revealing the database however.

You say that, but I know LAs have a DR plan if Capita goes belly up - maybe that's just wishful thinking, but being on the framework or being the biggest doesn't stop you going under!

Haha, fair enough. Sure you could do it, it'll just be a total faff. I'm ok changing passwords, never tried setting permissions - done it for FMS.