James_RM

Hi all, I've posted on EduGeek before but for those that don't know me, I'm Head of the RM Education Infrastructure business, which includes our RM SafetyNet offering. I just wanted to give absolute clarity on the matter personally as I fully appreciate this has had an impact on some of our customers. The following is going to be added to our status page imminently and will also be directly communicated to any customers that have raised related service calls. Last week we rolled out a change to enable YouTube’s new restricted mode for all RM broadband and RM SafetyNet customers, as part of continued investment in RM SafetyNet during an exciting time for the product. For this particular feature though, we have decided to rollback this change to facilitate a growing request from customers to disable the mode. The rollback will take place this evening. More details below: YouTube restricted mode is a network-wide setting that disables comments & hides inappropriate videos based on Google’s filters, and our implementation of this has come about because we’re applying their recommended method for preventing access to adult videos. For a variety of reasons customers may want to disable this mode and whilst Google themselves offer guidance on how to do this, we recognise now that customers would benefit from the ability to disable this with greater ease. We maintain that implementing the ability to enable YouTube restricted mode is a positive step forward in providing Schools with a safe and secure online experience, but customers can expect us to be back with clear communication and guidance on the matter before re-releasing the feature. I hope this helps and if anyone has any thoughts or questions, please don't hesitate to contact me directly, the Support team, or your Account Manager. Thanks, James Browning

Thank you for highlighting this. To clarify, adding machines to an existing network is definitely possible. The subscription service becomes relevant when a School chooses to upgrade, or indeed if they are installing a new network altogether. I hope this helps. James

Thank you for highlighting this. To clarify, adding machines to an existing network is definitely possible. The subscription service becomes relevant when a School chooses to upgrade, or indeed if they are installing a new network altogether. I hope this helps. James

Hi there again. I'm more than happy to share a comment on moving CC4 to a subscription service. Firstly, whilst as I mentioned we are actively looking at options for Cloud based network management that can chime in with that trend I mentioned of our propositions helping Schools to save money, CC4 is still a core part of our network management offering. To this end we continue to invest in it to keep it stable, up to date, and to add new features in response to customer and market demand. Many of these new features relate to helping Schools start or continue on their journey to the Cloud; recent additions such as OneDrive mapper and upcoming features such as MIS Sync are evidence of this. We've recently made our high level roadmap networks roadmap public to evidence this. This directly links to our decision to move to a subscription based service. By buying a CC4 subscription you are buying in to commitment to ongoing development and the latest version in line with what we have come to expect of any Software as a Service. We're confident that this can save Schools money too, helping them to avoid spikes in spend and choose the right option for them year on year without being tied down by the burden of huge capital investments. As before though, I appreciate that every case is different and I genuinely urge anybody that feels they are not being offered value for money to get in touch. It would be wrong of me not to mention that we also work with a huge number of customers that have taken the vanilla on-premise route, with experience of supporting them in a general support and managed service environment. I've personally seen RM's capability in this area grow tremendously over the last few years, which is reflective of our acknowledgement that to be a true partner we need to be prepared to support a wide ranging set of tech. Thanks again, James

Hi there again. I'm more than happy to share a comment on moving CC4 to a subscription service. Firstly, whilst as I mentioned we are actively looking at options for Cloud based network management that can chime in with that trend I mentioned of our propositions helping Schools to save money, CC4 is still a core part of our network management offering. To this end we continue to invest in it to keep it stable, up to date, and to add new features in response to customer and market demand. Many of these new features relate to helping Schools start or continue on their journey to the Cloud; recent additions such as OneDrive mapper and upcoming features such as MIS Sync are evidence of this. We've recently made our high level roadmap networks roadmap public to evidence this. This directly links to our decision to move to a subscription based service. By buying a CC4 subscription you are buying in to commitment to ongoing development and the latest version in line with what we have come to expect of any Software as a Service. We're confident that this can save Schools money too, helping them to avoid spikes in spend and choose the right option for them year on year without being tied down by the burden of huge capital investments. As before though, I appreciate that every case is different and I genuinely urge anybody that feels they are not being offered value for money to get in touch. It would be wrong of me not to mention that we also work with a huge number of customers that have taken the vanilla on-premise route, with experience of supporting them in a general support and managed service environment. I've personally seen RM's capability in this area grow tremendously over the last few years, which is reflective of our acknowledgement that to be a true partner we need to be prepared to support a wide ranging set of tech. Thanks again, James

Hello, my name is James Browning and I’ve recently taken up the post of Head of Infrastructure at RM with accountability for our Networks, Cloud and Connectivity business areas. Prior to that I worked with Schools across London delivering Managed Services. I hope you don’t mind me chipping in. Firstly from a general proposition perspective, we’re working on some exciting new propositions that will help Schools to save money, save time and improve standards. In particular we’re harnessing our relationship with Microsoft, Google and other tech partners alongside development of our own IP to bring competitive cloud based offerings in the areas of Backup, Mobile Device Management, Infrastructure as a Service, Security and Safeguarding. That’s at the same time as recognising that today the majority of Schools are working in a largely on-premise world, so having the support to enable them get there is key. I’d be more than happy to personally visit any of those that have commented to talk you through this in a bit more detail and to be really open, see if you feel the same after we have chatted. Just PM me if you're up for that. Alternatively we will be presenting on a lot of these things at the upcoming RM Seminars, and I’ll be at the majority of these too. As for the annual support contract in particular, we’re continuing to invest in maintaining and widening our supported technologies list to ensure it covers all of the main technologies a School is likely to have today and in the future. I’d encourage anybody that feels their support is not offering them good value for money to get in touch. I do appreciate just how tight budgets are right now, making it more important than ever to get return on your investments. Thanks, James