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Hello, We are looking at re-furbishing our ICT suite and replacing PC's in school etc... and wondered what the cost may be to implement some kind of virtual computing environment? Our network is getting a bit full and the cost of installing new network points and switches, new computers etc... would be quite high. What would it be weighed against developing a virtual computing environment? Am I correct in thinking that if we have a virtual server a workstation could log on and use any operating system? Also- would all users see the same desktop and be able to use the same programs? I have more questions for later... J x

A website that focusses upon the developments in ICT that may be of significance to education. Future2: Mission Knowledge Economy Some interesting web apps that could be used in the classroom and iPhone apps too. Hope you like

Hello, Has anyone gone ahead with plans to launch a new MIS and/or Finance system during the C19 disruption? We were planning to complete our procurement but we are now concerned if the training/change management is too much of a risk during this time? Would be good to understand any experiences (positive and negative) if anyone has tried? Many thanks

Hi I want some advice. I currently am taking some exams for my Microsoft server course. but I've been hearing about Virtual PC's hosted in the cloud does any of you know a good place where i can install a few virtual servers that i can install in the cloud and practice for my exams? I don't want to be bound by my PC. would be an advantage to log in from any where and access the servers. Thanks

Morning All, i am just asking for anyones views or reviews on cloud based networks for primary schools. i work at a couple of primary schools in kent and they are thinking of going down the cloud based route for their school network. i only know of one school that had it and they said it was the worst thing they ever did. can you let me know your views and who you used and also if the staff or pupils had any access to it from home and if so how you set that up? thanks Martin

I am in Baku, Azerbaijan and have been set the task of finding a MIS system. The school extends from primary to secondary (post-16). At present everything is done on paper (nightmare) but as a developing school we are keen to investigate and implement a robust system. If anyone is in Azerbaijan or know of overseas and UK companies that cover this country or would be willing to, then please help me. I have read loads of threads but am still researching - any help would be welcomed.

Does anybody know how to setup shared storage on Amazon Web Services?

Windows Azure AppFabric is Microsoft's next-generation middleware application platform in the cloud, providing access control with federated identity, high-density, multi-tenant component-hosting, caching services, on-premise connectivity, rich publish/subscribe messaging, and integration services. Clemens Vasters, an Architect on the AppFabric product team at Microsoft is coming to India this April at Great Indian Developer Summit. He will provide an overview of the AppFabric services that are already commercially available and the new services that Microsoft will bring to market until the end of this year. The summit will take place from 19-22 April, 2011 at IISc, Bangalore. Clemens Vasters is in a Technical Lead/Architect role on Windows Azure AppFabric at Microsoft Corporation. Clemens has been with Microsoft for 5 years and has worked on WCF, Modeling and Cloud Platform technologies. Before joining Microsoft he's been touring the world teaching, implementing, and speaking about distributed systems, and Web services. Clemens has written several books, contributed to numerous open source projects and was the original author of dasBlog, one of the first open source blogging engines on ASP.NET. Follow Clemens on Twitter at @clemensv. For further information on GIDS 2011, please visit the summit on the web developersummit.com

I’ve just had 2 different companies phone me to try and sell me 'cloud' storage and SaaS facilities. I told them that I wasn’t interested because of the security etc but is it just me? I want to embrace it but just can’t see it working. Can someone please tell me that I’m right or is this the way forward? Cheers

Hi All, Been watching these forums for a while but this is my first post, please go easy I think I'm possibly being paranoid but let's see what you all think. I work for a company who primarily look after a bunch of primary schools and my job is to visit each of these reguarly for maintenance visits. What I'm seeing is more and more teachers coming away from using their USB sticks and instead using google docs and office live for document storage. Apart from pictures, office type documents make up the majority of files stored on the servers. Projecting 5 years or so into the future - is the future for local file servers in our schools bleak? I'd like at some point to move to a role in a secondary or college. Currently in our Primary schools we don't use Exchange or Sharepoint etc but I guess secondaries and colleges would. With the future looking more and more cloud based, are Micro$haft Online Services and the like taking the bread and butter away from our jobs? Please tell me I'm just being paranoid.

Hi All, I was wondering if anyone has fully migrated their schools to Google....? I work in a large primary school with a very "hybrid" set up. The students use Chromebooks, and some of the staff/teachers do to. However, there is still an on-prem DC (that is tired) managing a few windows laptops hosting services such, Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, Printing, and file shares too. My thoughts are to do the following... - Deploy the google drive client on remaining windows devices to sync users files to the workspace - Use papercut mobility print for printing services - Host DNS, and DHCP on firewall. - Use something like Synology Active Backup for workspace, pointing to a NAS off/on site. - They already use Arbor for their MIS so no issues there. - Invest in a redundant FTTC/5G connection in the event of a main line issue. - Senso.Cloud for safeguarding monitoring, and possibly Securly for extra filtering. - Licensing is perpetual, so would be looking at roughly £30 per device - Training provided to staff/students on how to use the Google Workspace apps Please let me know if I have missed anything, as I am sure I have! I am more interested to see if any schools have actually succeeded in migrating fully to Google? How have staff found it? Has there been any software issues? is it even possible? haha!

Morning All, i am just asking for anyones views or reviews on cloud based networks for primary schools. i work at a couple of primary schools in kent and they are thinking of going down the cloud based route for their school network. i only know of one school that had it and they said it was the worst thing they ever did. can you let me know your views and who you used and also if the staff or pupils had any access to it from home and if so how you set that up? thanks Martin

Cloud Computing : Top 5 checks 1) Does your cloud provider offer security appropriate to the service? For example, ISO/IEC 27001 Information Security and CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) checks where access to data about children is concerned. Where does the service operate from and is it covered by Data Protection Act (DPA)? This is crucial where personal data is sent outside of the European Economic Area (EEA)! Safe Harbor is an alternative safeguard Export.gov - Safe Harbor. Remember the 8 key DPA principles are: - Personal data shall be processed fairly and lawfully and, in particular, shall not be processed unless – (a) at least one of the conditions in Schedule 2 is met, and (b) in the case of sensitive personal data, at least one of the conditions in Schedule 3 is also met. - Personal data shall be obtained only for one or more specified and lawful purposes, and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or those purposes. - Personal data shall be adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the purpose or purposes for which they are processed. - Personal data shall be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date. - Personal data processed for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes. - Personal data shall be processed in accordance with the rights of data subjects under this Act. - Appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data. Personal data shall not be transferred to a country or territory outside the European Economic Area unless that country or territory ensures an adequate level of protection for the rights and freedoms of data subjects in relation to the processing of personal data. 2) What are the stated availability targets for the service and against what timeframes are these measured? How quickly will the service be recovered in the event of a major incident, or even disaster? What penalties, or credits, are in place if Service Level Agreement (SLA) targets are not met? 3) Do you have enough bandwidth capacity? Remember, you, your colleagues and your customers may be accessing multiple services from differing bandwidths with varying contention ratios. Whilst most web traffic is efficient over HTTP and HTTPS (ports 80 and 443), other methods for accessing services such as Citrix, or Terminal Services, can be less efficient – even when encapsulated within HTTP/S. 4) What options are available for offline productivity? Gears is Google’s way of offering access to some online files offline by adding additional features to your web browser. However, Google’s strategy is shifting from Gears to online storage and development ceased in February 2010. Features available in HTML5 offer equivalent alternatives to Gears and can clearly be taken advantage of by all web service providers. Unfortunately, HTML5 as a ratified World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standard is some way off! However, parts of HTML5 are already implemented in browsers including Web Storage and DOM Storage (Document Object Model) – web application software methods and protocols used for storing data in a web browser. 5) And finally portability! How easy will it be to move, or share, your data? Look for open standards for data migration and interoperability. In the education marketplace the Systems Interoperability Framework (SIF) is your best bet! You may also consider options to improve your customer experience through standards for Single Sign-on such as OpenID or Shibboleth (SAML 2.0). This will allow you to provide many cloud services from many different providers, whilst maintaining a single set of access credentials with one-time login and increased security.

Link: Microsoft Takes Desktop Management to the Cloud: Introducing Windows Intune - Windows 7 Team Blog - The Windows Blog http://windowsteamblog.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/windows7/windowsintune_5F00_screenshot_5F00_0834B422.jpg Anyone going to give it a go?