Presentation From EduGeek 2010 Conference.

1. MIS: Back to the Future Graham Cooper, Head of Marketing Phillip Hamlyn, Associate Technical Director

2. Smart Phones The Cloud MIS and Software Technologies The Future of MIS

3. Smart Phones

4. Smart Phones Smart Phones are becoming the norm They could overload mobile networks The best applications are tailored to the phone Separate platforms make development expensive Apple - iPhone Microsoft – Windows Phone 7 Blackberry Google - Android

5. Smart Phones Great for doing single tasks They are extraordinarily flexible local storage play media voting pads sophisticated scientific instruments 1000’s of applications (‘apps’) extend this further They could be used in the classroom by pupils and teachers .....

6. Smart Phones Smart phone interfaces are impacting PC designs Touch interfaces that understand gestures Designer led software No manuals (or training) required iPad

7. Intuitive Interface

8. “Push” Reporting – SIMS Homepage

9. The Cloud

10. The Cloud What benefits could the Cloud bring? Powerful services can be delivered via the Cloud voice to text translation directions avoiding traffic data storage and processing The Cloud isn’t necessarily safe – as Buzz users recently discovered

11. Cloud computing What happens to your data if the company goes bust or loses interest? How do you know that your data is safe? How do you know that you are complying with data protection law? How do you get to your data when the Internet is down? How do you move your data to another supplier?

13. Open source or free software is to be encouraged

14. There is an assumption that software is a commodity

17. Application Technology Future Basic business computing and communication technology has advanced markedly over the past 10 years but … This advance is asymmetric The most visible advances are not the most important for the future of information and applications What are the trends and where are they leading business applications ?

18. Application Software Advances

19. Advances in Application Technology - Client Client technologies are different now but have clear antecedents ActiveX (2000) == Silverlight (2010) Browser plug in providing desktop experience for browser application users Psion 5 (1997) == iPod Touch (2007) Touch screen enabled general purpose PDA, media player DHTML (1997) == HTML AJAX (2006) Responsive zero client browser client scripting technology User friendliness and consumer desire have increased linearly, but are not “game changers”

20. Main Drivers of Client Technology Improvements Globalisation of manufacture Better devices are cheaper to manufacture Global Positioning Satellite data Location based information gives an extra class of features Mobile telephone networks & Wi-Fi networks Allows many devices to be ‘always connected’ Operating systems and application features have not driven client-side technology. We pretty much do the same with our software as we did in 2000.

21. Advances in Application Technology - Server Server technologies now in existence bear little relationship to those available in 2000 CGI, Perl, ASP architectures, vertically integrated stacks are legacy Managed (.net, J2EE) architectures and hardware virtualisation are the norm. Further massive steps in virtualisation and server power are appearing which further challenge preconceived partitions between “client” and “server”

22. Main Drivers of Server Technology Improvements Massive industrialisation of server farms Industrialisation has historically driven huge reductions in cost Very clever virtualisation software and management systems give redundancy, performance and scalability Ubiquitous TCPIP global communications High speed broadband Use of TCPIP as the defining standard for inter systems communication.

23. Grasping the Advantage New line-of-business applications need to take advantage of the non-linear increase in server side capacity Anything that isn’t directly dealing with immediate user interaction should reside in the cloud Rich Internet Application platforms give immediacy and richness that old browser based technologies cannot This doesn’t mean the application cannot be locally hosted (or regionally hosted). The whole concept of ‘the cloud’ means the customer gets to choose, not that they lose the choice.

24. Relevance to Schools MIS Software location will be a customer choice, not a technology limitation – local, regional or national hosting are all options RIA platforms free the user and designer from making the “browser or thick client” decision. No client installs and no upgrade costs, no hardware refreshes and no HTML incompatibilities Multi-tenanting of schools in a single database will be common for schools seeking integration and resource sharing, without sacrificing security or performance

25. Assertions about the Future Assertion - all user-facing devices will support common RIA platforms. Perhaps not today’s iPhone, but tomorrows will Assertion – industrial server farms will just get bigger, cheaper, and greener Hosting a database locally will be seen as idiosyncratic and a avoidable security risk. Assertion – Application suites will extend support for plug-ins, but on their own terms Most big applications support plugins but there will not be a ubiquitous standard for plugin support – the technology exists (and always has done) but other than generics like spellcheckers the concept has got no further

26. Possible shape of new Schools MIS Client entirely based on RIA platform, run on-demand or downloaded for offline use. Server components hosted entirely off-site in a server farm of the users choice. Many traditionally interactive processes run using asynchronous batches. Co-hosting of many schools in a single federated database, sharing data limited only by security considerations rather than technology Expansion of user types to home carers, nurseries peripatetic teachers and other relevant, authorised users.

27. The Future of MIS Today the MIS is just as important in the classroom as the office VLEs and MIS are competing for the teacher’s attention VLEs do not seem to have delivered value Is the future separate systems or a fully integrated solution delivered over the web?

28. Future of MIS What ever future solutions we design: the needs of educationalists are paramount we cannot go back to data “mine shafts” we need to retain strong links to Office (or whatever the future brings) to improve ease of use the total cost of ownership must be as low as possible a rich interface is essential for power workers

29. Could you be a SIMS Partnership School? Over 50 SIMS Partnership schools: Measurable improvement in standards Improved assessment results Reduced absence and truancy Fewer behaviour issues Improvements in Ofsted grades School Management Efficiency Save time and generate cashable savings Time saved on first day contact Save time looking for documents Enhanced Parental Engagement Parents arriving for parent consultation informed by data online Parents on your side