MIS: Back to the Future

Graham Cooper, Head of

Marketing

Phillip Hamlyn, Associate

Technical Director

Smart Phones

The Cloud

MIS and Software Technologies

The Future of MIS

Smart Phones

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

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 .....

Smart Phones

Smart phone interfaces are impacting PC designs

Touch interfaces that understand gestures

Designer led software

No manuals (or training) required

iPad

Intuitive Interface

“Push” Reporting – SIMS Homepage

The Cloud

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

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?

The G-Cloud The previous

Government has committed public bodies to using cloud services: G-Cloud

All public bodies will be able to host applications on the central computers

Open source or free software is to be encouraged

There is an assumption that software is a commodity

Typically this route does not offer a rich interface

The Cloud

Typically cloud applications lack richness

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 ?

Application Software AdvancesTime

2000

2010

2014

“Server” Technologies “Client” Technologies

WinTel, Mac and

PDA

WinTel, MacTelMobile

WinTel, MacTel,Mobile

Physical highly coupled deployment

Hardware virtualization – limited dependency on hardware environment

Complete application virtualization – limited dependencies on hosting environment

Fast Technical Advance Slow Technical Advance

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”

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.

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”

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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

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