Non-Existant Budgets of IT

The Government's official approach is that Schools are not having their budgets cut.  This is sadly the lie, what they actually mean is extra funding for certain facilities is no longer available.  Disability benefits are slashed, County Support has been cut and Schools are looking after more and more children.  So one of the many factors being his is - IT.  How to survive?

1. Get the suppliers to fight - show them the prices you can get
2. Forget Branded PCs
3. Provide what's needed, not what you would like
4. Don't be set in your ways
5. Look at alternatives and play/test
6. Consider Cloud
7. Review your annual licenses, facilities - are you using them?
8. Virtualise Servers
9. Permanently fix problems

Number 1
When ever I get my "Forced" Governor quotations I don't consider this a need for them, instead I consider this a must have for me.  Tell the suppliers what you can get some where else.  Get them to fight each other for your business.  They need you - remember that.  I once got a quote of a PC for just around £300 for the spec I wanted and this was after I had already received a 30x quote.  The quotations were all similar from about 5 suppliers - some high end some not so.  I started the bidding war for my business by telling them what each other had quoted us for.  Four of them immediately started dropping the prices, I updated each other with those prices while also knocking of my own few pounds.  The end result was a PC with the same spec I wanted, same make etc - £211.  The monitors I also managed to knock off £20, projectors £15, sound bars £35 and a few other bits and pieces.  Now not only was my first initial quote of 30x PCs just at £300 I also mentioned that we was after closer to 100 of them.  It became a cat amongst the pigeons.


Number 2
Why branded PCs? are the internal components any different? No.  Are paying for specialised towers? No.  Are you paying them to be made in the local County? No they are all being made generally - China in a warehouse.  This is sadly another "Set in their ways" moment.  100 Branded PCs vs Non Branded and we managed to save thousands.  Branded PCs in the same spec would have cost around £350 each and another £20 on top for the monitor.  The failure rate of our non Branded?  2 in 250 over 3 Years.  The Branded? only 1.  Is it worth the additional cost of an extra failure rate?


Number 3
Provide the spec of the machines that are needed by users, not super fast that will never be used by them.  Unless you are doing a mass amount of professional demanding work which need that extra punch there is no reason you should be getting high end spec machines.  After 5 years they will be no different than simple spec - by simple spec I mean at least Intel i3s not Celerons.  I avoid Celerons because they do tend to age badly - in my experience.


Number 4 and Number 5
Be open minded to alternatives, try them out for your self.


Number 6
I am considering Cloud which I will cover in another post, not that I want to but because of the "Savings" I can make to the School.


Number 7
A lot of Schools in my Years have spent tens of thousands on external services that do not get used or get used enough.  When you start to question Staff about pulling the plug, they start advertising it to other Staff.  They prove what the software can do to everyone.  At times you will find that software isn't known but others, you may find its simply not being used and can be scrapped which means money saving.


Number 8
One of the first things I did in my current job when I arrived was quick review over everything.  The networking, the servers, IT Suites, state of the classrooms IT setup and what the day to day jobs were for the Team.  The first main one was buying a Virtual Server.  We had almost 20 servers and had spent an average of £2,000 every single year for a new server every time some one wanted a new facility.  Course the School wasn't planning ahead, they would buy a basic server with a bit of storage and voila - done.  Virtual Server although very expensive at under £10,000 allowed us to make a massive impact not only for the future development but replace any failing servers and much more.  I will cover more of this in another post.


Number 9
The easy one, permanently fix problems so you don't have to visit them again.  If this means you need to fight your corner for a better budget today or to make sure IT Support are doing IT Support - Do it.  Each hour you cut down a year later through permanently fixing problems, is an hour you can better spend saving the School money through projects, cutting down issues and generally making things better.  This will also be covered in another post regarding IT Support.


Don't agree? Suffer the same? don't be afraid to comment!