Selling education tech seems to be a license to print money. A few years back my school had a new science block built costing multiple millions. When I looked at the IT specs I was astounded - £195,000 budget. cheap generic wireless access points (which wouldn't have connected to our Cisco controllers) placed where they could do the least good, a 24 port switch in a cupboard to link the 18 data ports to the network (still can't figure out what they were going to connect the 30+ access points to) - all linked to our comms suite 150 metres away by a single length of CAT5e! This was a joint cockup between the achitect who designed it and the council who took the purchase list and handed it to their procurement people.
I spoke to the project manager about the inadequate resources and he said that if I could find it cheaper I was welcome to try. 12 months later we had 8 an core multimode fibre backbone to the block. Cisco airlap access points everywhere, a new WAP controller, 40+ access points, more data sockets than you could shake a big stick at, all running from a dedicated, air conditioned comms room with plenty of room for expansion. Total cost - £85,000 but I did have to install the hardware myself.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
