Education Software Solutions tells school customers: We are moving to 3-year licensing contracts and so are you

Education Software Solutions – a one-time Capita-owned school software provider now under the control of Montagu Private Equity – is being marked down by customers for moving to minimum three-year licensing contracts. Sold in December for £400m, ESS has become part of the same group as ParentPay, run by CEO Mark Brant, who …

[42656e4d203239]

ESS continues where crapita left off? Shocked I tell you; my ghast is flabbered.

I am sure my Business Manager might be a trifle miffed at this development... Icon represents her probable reaction.

SIMS is, currently, a steaming pile of ordure; each time you use it you are reminded just how fresh that excrement is!

It has seen virtually no development since inception - Crapita (now ESS) preferring to milk thier bond slaves for every penny in their budgets rather than develop a useable, modern application.

Hey ho - interesting times!

[Danny 14]

Re: ESS continues where crapita left off? Shocked I tell you; my ghast is flabbered.

I know of two school IT managers that LOVE this news because it does trigger a competitive tender. They hate sims and this is a great way to get rid of it. There are plenty of other MIS providers now and a great many know how to extract data efficiently for a transfer.

[Chris G]

Just waving potentially new features without specifics is meaningless and cannot justify extending to a minimum contract term of 3years.

If I was a decision maker at a school I would immediately start looking for alternatives.

[Dwarf]

When will companies realise that trying to convert customers into hostages will never work in the medium to long term.

Sure if you want to tank a product and want short term gain then it might work, but that is all.

[42656e4d203239]

>>if you want to tank a product

Looking at the state of SIMS now this may well be ESS master plan.

It will probably cost so much to undo years of bodges and refactor it into something useable(?) and maintainable that it will be cheaper to scrap it and replace with something else. Forcing the 3 year commitment may(unlikely but a bean counter might consider the proposition) raise enough capital to fund said redo from start + data migration tools....

more likely thats what they will claim will happen (indeed are with their jam tomorrow promises) but the reality will be SIMS festering for another 10 years till they get the bottle to scrap it with no migration plan (much easier when there are fewer schools around to complain).

[KarMann]

Shorter Montagu/ESS:

I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further.

[Danny 14]

Re: Shorter Montagu/ESS:

I find your lack of faith disturbing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sims is an awfully outdated product. Some of it is still based on Pascal and Dbase I believe!!

It makes you wonder why they didn't just start again with a modern framework but they seem to have built on top of the legacy code over and over again to the point where it is impossible to upgrade.

Our school moved away from Sims years ago, we saw this coming.

[fargoneicehole]

little brother is consolidating

pascal and dbase or not it definitely wasn't MSSQL and .NET in 1984

[localzuk]

Fame at last...

Complaining. Exactly what I want my 10 seconds of fame to be for.

[Howard Sway]

former Capita-owned biz, now under control of Montagu Private Equity

This is what gets me - that anybody could ever look at a supplier and say "hmmm, formerly owned by capita, now owned by private equity firm........ yes I think I'll sign a contract with them as I'm sure it'll be excellent value and nothing will go wrong..............."

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: former Capita-owned biz, now under control of Montagu Private Equity

And not forgetting, of course, that the company is now saddled with the purchase price as debt. At least while Crapita owned it, it was just running costs plus profit. Now it's running costs plus ROI on purchase + profits. No wonder they're trying to strong-arm their customers into 3 year contracts!

[Tempest 3K]

Schools still use this crap?

I'm amazed, I thought it was on it's way out when I stopped working in education IT back in 2007 - having to apply patches to a DOS based system then seemed outdated but half the modules still ran that way!

[localzuk]

Re: Schools still use this crap?

The DOS based stuff is long gone. Its all .Net stuff now.

[Anne Hunny Mouse]

There isn't a lot of choice in the market though.

Often schools don't have a choice - determined by the LEA / MAT

Sometimes schools may use a different system but some things need to be done in SIMS by the LEA.

[Anonymous Coward]

Breaking up is hard to do

The real problem is the cost of changing to a new system. The legacy data on thousands of students and staff will require to be imported into the new database. SIMS is mostly undocumented from a user point of view, you used to need a developer licence to access the complete database.

I guess RM will collect quite a few SIMS leavers, if you have to have a three year contract, it will make most institutions look at the alternatives, far more than the usual cursory look, and worry about the retraining costs, data transfer costs. Though SIMS is a bit crap, it's the crap every member of staff has to know at some level or another. Many schools use the add on modules for Timetabling, parent communications,registers,rewards,discipline,staff appraisals,catering and Wisepay etc.

It will be interesting to see how many schools jump ship, though I'm sure migration will be a very expensive pain in the arse.

One of the better aspects of SIMS was the training department, pity most of the experienced trainers were made redundant for the sale.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Breaking up is hard to do

"It will be interesting to see how many schools jump ship, though I'm sure migration will be a very expensive pain in the arse."

I do hope El Reg will keep on top of this story with respect to a possible climb down, and if not, re-visit it over the coming 6-12 months and see how their market share changes.

[Mike Tyler]

Leaving SIMS is not easy

The real problem is the cost of changing to a new system. The legacy data on thousands of students and staff will require to be imported into the new database. SIMS is mostly undocumented from a user point of view, you used to need a developer licence to access the complete database.

I guess RM will collect quite a few SIMS leavers, if you have to have a three year contract, it will make most institutions look at the alternatives, far more than the usual cursory look, and worry about the retraining costs, data transfer costs. Though SIMS is a bit crap, it's the crap every member of staff has to know at some level or another. Many schools use the add on modules for Timetabling, parent communications,registers,rewards,discipline,staff appraisals,catering and Wisepay etc.

It will be interesting to see how many schools jump ship, though I'm sure migration will be a very expensive pain in the arse.

One of the better aspects of SIMS was the training department, pity most of the experienced trainers were made redundant for the sale.

[Danny 14]

Re: Leaving SIMS is not easy

Isams and bromcom transfer fine. I know, ive done it on both. Because it is sims the smaller compa ies need to have robust transfers else noone will do it.

The main cost is 3rd party integrations, isams and bromcom use different API methods. These days a lot of 3rd party stuff use abominations such as wonde though.

[cornetman]

This kind of thing, where a large number of organisations require pretty much the same functionality, is a niche that could be ideally filled by free software.

Is anyone aware of anything that would fit the bill?

[localzuk]

No. The big issue is that there are regulatory return requirements that change constantly. So a significant chunk of the cost of any MIS is them having to constantly change stuff to comply with the DfE.

[Mr D Spenser]

Wanted - Government sponsored Hackathon

In some other universe...

For the good of the people they represent, the Government encourages development of an open source application for use by any school system that wishes to use it to meet the regulatory/compliance mandates created by said Government. The Government supplies the specs and manages the code while people with an interest in spending their tax dollars on actual education instead of overpriced administrative software contribute their time and talent. Let university students earn credit by participating in working through the bug fix/enhancement lists.

As I said, in some other universe.

[Abominator]

Fuckers.

And ParentPay is shit.

Private equity shit bags.

[ecofeco]

Best Darth Vader voice

"I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further."

[Steve K]

Re: Best Darth Vader voice

Looks like the echo was turned on too for effect!

[JohnMurray]

Hmmmm

Not bad. For software originally developed by a council, then given away to a local company which later developed into Crapita.

[heyrick]

Was the owner name "Blahblah Private Equity" not a clue on how hard they'd screw you for every last penny?

[Fonant]

I've had some minor involvement with SIMS, and from what I've seen it's horrible. A classic example of over-expensive software that's outdated and fiddly to use. Sounds like its days are numbered - perhaps schools will get something that fits their needs better.