rayfleming

Just a brief note - the Programme Guide above is for the US scheme - the version in Europe is slightly different, and we're just updating the UK version of that, which will be available shortly. I'll put the link to the UK version as soon as it's online. Ray

The CoreCal suite on EES works on the same basis as Office, Windows upgrade etc - as long as you have covered all of your FTEs, all of your school computers are covered, regardless of how many there are (and therefore all of your users are covered). Except computers dedicated to specific students (you have to license those additionally, through the Student Option or other ways)

As I was writing it (the letter), I was in two minds as well - there's always a risk that it's simply going to come across as irrelevant or patronising. But having spent enough time talking about these kind of issues with both IT managers and school leaders, there's definitely a disjoint in some schools. And yes, some schools will already have taken some or all of the steps I've talked about, but not everybody. I was with a college leadership team last week, and when we were talking about savings through server virtualisation, it turned out they had 100 servers, and not a single one virtualised. So for everybody that's done something to reduce cost, I think there's another who might find the discussion useful.

For server numbers, I did use some of the data from the How-many-servers-your-school thread. I agree it's not scientific, and also that I used the higher end of the numbers range, but then I think that those who are likely to consider virtualising, are likely to be those with more servers. Although at first glance it seems like there aren't many servers in primary schools, in addition to "The Server" there are normally some "hidden" ones: - there's normally an MIS server left on - although it often runs on a desktop machine in the office - lots of primary schools also have a cache/filtering box - eg SmartCache - which is also on 24x7 If anybody wants to add to the How Many Servers thread, I'll volunteer to add new results into the spreadsheet and republish the chart.

Thanks for the link nicholab - the latest version of the Top ICT Money Saving Tips is now here - this is the version that I continue to update. I'm continuing to work on more case studies - I published another one tonight, on West Hatch High School going paperless I can't be absolutely sure, but I reckon these are likely to be even handier after next week's budgets are revealed...

Mike Herrity's SharePoint in Education blog is a great resource for anybody who's got anything to do with SharePoint in schools - and he writes about both the technical and leadership point of view. At BETT earlier this year, he was offering a free web part, specifically for a photo slideshow. This may be just what you need BETT 2010 Giveaway- SharePoint Picture Gallery | SharePoint in Education (I'm not sure if he's still happy to freely distribute the web part, but it's worth asking him - his contact details are on the "SharePoint Support" page Ray

Having watched this thread start, get inflamed, calm down, get inflamed again etc I though perhaps I'd contribute just before I go on holiday for a week (ie lob in my opinions and walk away for a bit ) This whole thread started off with Miles' article from Agent4Change, but what prompted Miles to write his piece was my original blog post. To quote Miles' article: So here's my article that set it all off Top ICT Cost Saving Ideas for schools What my original blog post was all about was looking for ways to reduce school costs, but that didn't all rely on changing the quality of the service delivery in your school, so that teachers didn't get a worse experience. However, there are some changes which mean a small compromise by teachers, in order to get a big win for the school (eg when you spend more on photocopying & printing than you do on ICT, perhaps there's room to reduce the reprographics bill that will make a big difference to the school budget, without harming the IT spend). You'll see in my blog post that there are lots of specific case studies referenced, as I've tried to make all of my numbers grounded in real-life examples where possible. The other thing that I feel strongly is that there are lots of things an IT team can do in the school which will save money in other budget areas of the school - for example, if your school spends more on electricity, reprographics and cover teachers than it does on ICT, then if the IT team can reduce costs in those areas, it's a much more positive way to approach budget cutting (and that is also why my maximum calculated savings for an average school are way more than an average school actually spends on all of its ICT). I also think that if the SMT ask every budget to knock of 10% from their budget, they'll miss the opportunity to truly reduce long-term cost overall. Server virtualisation is a good example - with a bit of up-front investment in your IT budget, you can cut a big lump off your electric bill. If you're not given the investment, you're not going to be able to virtualise, and the electric bill will keep going up. Same with desktop power management - the incentive at a school level is big to knock £10K off the electric bill, but it also has to be there as an incentive for the IT team -so that it's a win/win. I wrote an article recently for senior managers, to ask them to try and avoid silo thinking in their budget cuts - don't just knock a bit off every line, but see how some teams can help reduce costs in other areas - and then work on those bits. One of my colleagues said "It's a bit like losing weight. If you diet, you change the habits, and you learn how to diet better. If you lose weight by chopping off one of your arms, it's not good in the long-term, because next time you need to lose weight, you've only got one arm left to chop off."

This page on the Becta website tells you what the requirements are: Becta Schools - Resources - Internet services

I know there are other threads too on this, but for completeness, useful to add here that the Grant has been cut for a second time (in total a £100M reduction), reducing it by 50% in total. This too, will roll down into schools Harnessing Technology Grant - cut again

Yup - it was £200M a couple of weeks ago, the first cut was to fund Free Schools (£50M) and then the additional £50M was cut yesterday, bringing the remaing HT Grant down to £100M. At first I was fooled, and that they'd double-announced the cut (the opposite of the trick of the last government, who used to double announce new spending), but no such luck

Well, at last I get to use my favourite education phrase - Everyone's a winner - because we do outsource our helpdesk support (ie when I call our techies, I'm talking to somebody who doesn't work for Microsoft); however the rest of our IT is run in-house by our excellent IT team. And, Yes, IMHO from a IT user perspective, they run it pretty well

Ben Nunney (the Live@edu deployment specialist who helped @Jake above) has written an extensive and comprehensive "Live@edu Implementation Guide". Live@edu Implementation Guide - Microsoft UK Schools blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs It includes: •How to structure your email domains •Options for configuring your student IDs •Switching your domains from your in-house servers to ours •Managing domains where staff are on an in-house mail service whilst students are in the cloud •Configuring Single Sign On •Automating the synchronisation of your user accounts •Setting up mail transport rules eg for banned words, mail filtering, domain restrictions etc •Branding your mail service

I've updated the spreadsheet with all of your additions - I'll publish it onto SkyDrive, so that I can continue to update it live - and then I'll repost the link. @Ric, can't believe I coloured you Red when you should have been Green. Unforgiveable. I'll be wearing the D cap all weekend.

Thanks for all of the answers. I've churned them all into a spreadsheet (attached). Here's the chart of what the answers look like. The axes for the chart are no. of servers, and no. of students. I have put them into two groups: - Whether the school has already virtualised (green for virtualised, red for not) - Primary (diamond) or secondary (triangle) (I've made some subjective judgements when answers went across both categories) If you draw an imaginary line from bottom left to top right, then 'below the line' is the better place to be - as that means lower servers/cost per student http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer-Blogs-Components-WeblogFiles/00-00-00-81-34/8420.HowManyServers.jpg The things that immediately strike me are: Primary schools that have virtualised have more servers per student than those that don't - I think this is because they use more ICT - eg more desktops to support Secondary schools that have virtualised, have less servers per student - many of them have many, many more virtual servers, on a smaller number of physical servers Secondary schools who have virtualised their servers are supporting 40% more users per physical server. Up from an average of 84 students/server to 117 students/server. How Many Servers Do Schools have.xlsx

Does this help? Ben Nunney, who works on the Live@Edu team in the UK, posted a link for the current agent on his blog: Upgrade your Management Agent - UK Live@Edu Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

James - my understanding is that they've only cut 25% not the whole grant - I've tried to summarise the key references and sources into one simple blog post

In response to Mr.Ben's question, at #7 I'd pulled out the Office pricing only to make a direct comparison, not the whole desktop pack. At the time I'd called Pugh, and they quoted me the typical School Agreement price. I'm not sure what the current pricing is - I wrote the blog post in Jan, and it may have changed a little - I suspect it's probably gone up by one or two pounds since then, with the introduction of Office 2010. (For those who're bemused, it's this blog post that Mr.Ben's referring to.

Has anybody yet actually had the message through their head that they will be taking some of their budget away because of Friday's cut in the Harnessing Technology Grant? It will be interesting to see which Local Authorities are acting quickly on communicating this, and how they're applying it (ie how much of the pain is shared, and how much is directly handed on to schools)

I wrote a quick summary last night, incuding links to all of the sources for info - I was trying to pull the key facts together, as the info appeared to be a mix of different information in different places. Harnessing Technology Grant

After 25 replies, there's a discernible trend (although "lots of servers" isn't yet scientific enough)

The Harnessing Technology Grant isn't disappearing completely. What they've done is take £50M of the total £200M this year, and move that across. So it's only 25% that's gone, not all of it. Michael Gove outlines process for setting up Free Schools - Department for Education I guess we don't know which 25% yet - is it the 25% that local authorities are allowed to retain (for costs and broadband) or does it come out of the 75% that must be devolved to schools. The total Harnessing Techonology grant, for the full programme from 2008/9 to 2010/11 was £638M, of which £200M fell into this year. I guess the thing to really watch out for is what happens from April 2011, because there's no committed grant there yet (ie nothing to be cut!). Given that capital expenditure is forecast to be cut dramatically over the next few years, and Harnessing Technology Grant was 100% capital, then it's a likely target...

I've been in a range of secondary schools recently, and am still always surprised at how many servers there are in some - the average I've seen seems to be between 10 and 15, although I have been to one where it was 30, before they virtualised. Becta's latest Harnessing Technology survey focused on desktops and notebooks, but didn't cover the server side, so nothing like a non-scientific survey: How many servers do you have? How many students? What type of school are you in - secondary/primary/other? Once there's enough responses, I'll aggregate the answers and put it back in this thread.

The download links for the 30 free software packages we covered are here: The Fun and Free Friday event - Microsoft UK Schools blog A lot of the attendees were teachers from schools, and over the lunch break I was asked a couple of times "Would you run this event again, so that I can persuade my network manager to come along, so that he can see what I've seen?". If we ran this event again during the summer holidays, would people be interested? Ray

I wrote a simple guide on the blog Home Access - tell your parents now As I understand it, they've given out 80% of the grants, so your parents will have to move quickly to get their applications in. Although there's lots of detail, the rule of thumb is: Parents of children in KS2 and 3, who qualify for free school meals, should phone the grant line (0333 200 1004) to request a pack. I also wrote a quick summary of the suppliers here

Important clarification from me! My answer was in the context of a normal public-facing website, with anonymous users (ie one where you don't login to your Active Directory etc). If you are building a website where users login, eg you are building a VLE in it, then you'll need CALs etc for the users that login.