RM Tech Talk issue 9
Welcome to issue 9 of Tech Talk. Your monthly roundup of insights to help inform your school, college or trust’s digital strategy.
For those with an interest in technology for education, January normally means one thing. No, not abstinence from the things you may have overindulged in during the Christmas break but Bett Global . This month's Tech Talk contains information about Bett, but other things too so read on.
See you at Bett?
We will be exhibiting at Bett Global later this month. Celebrating its 40th anniversary, Bett is the largest opportunity for educators to learn about the latest in education technology and talk to solution providers face-to-face.
Bett runs from 22-24 January at ExCel London.
Our stand is SD32 in the Managed Service Provider Village. We are excited to partner with ViewSonic Education , Redstor and Dell Technologies for the event.
Visit us to discuss our modular IT services and see how RM Technology can drive efficiency in your school.
There will be a great deal more happening on our stand during the show:
If you need to boost your energy levels during the day, you can always pick up one of our chocolate treats,?courtesy of Redstor, to keep you going.
We have a meeting room available in the Managed Service Provider Village if you’d like to discuss your school’s or trust’s IT strategy in more depth. Even if you’re not attending Bett (or you have colleagues who aren’t), the meeting room has full video conferencing facilities for remote meetings too.
Book your slot on the website.
Meanwhile, we’ll be delivering a presentation on the ViewSonic stand (NK10) on Wed, 22nd Jan, from 15:00-16:00 entitled “Take Control to Overcome IT Challenges”. RM’s Ben Foyster and Michael Oakes will share insights from their work with schools and other organisations on IT strategy and delivery.
Keep an eye on our social media channels for more information closer to the show.
We look forward to seeing you there, tickets are available from the event website.
Have you considered leasing for software licences?
The international financial reporting standard IFRS 16 has been applied to schools since 2024. It ends the distinction between operating and finance leases for accounting purposes. Our blog post from April 2024 has more details.
The Secretary of State’s general consent for leases relating to certain types of assets includes IT equipment. RM’s leasing partners, edde, have confirmed that the general consent applies to software licences.
This means that schools and trusts can use lease agreements to acquire licences for software such as filtering and monitoring solutions or cyber security protections.
Software licences are commonly provided annually. Leases, on the other hand, are normally longer-term arrangements, typically three years. A single three-year agreement may well cost less than three times the one-year cost.
Leases fix the cost for the term of the lease, which brings an additional benefit. By using a lease for a software licence, schools and trusts can protect themselves against unexpected price increases from one year to the next.
Multi-academy trusts could benefit from volume discounts if they use leases to acquire software licences for their schools at the same time or when adding new schools to existing trust arrangements.
If you’re looking for a budget-friendly way to procure software for your school or trust, get in touch today.
Bett 2025 is a great opportunity to rethink data protection in education
Redstor, our partners for data backup systems, have published a blog post in the run up to Bett about how their products help meet the specific needs of education establishments.
Effective data backup is essential to deal with cyber security threats as well as emergencies caused by physical or technical hazards.
Read the blog post for more information or visit our stand SD32 at Bett to discuss your needs.
领英推荐
A new, bigger AI inn
As we mentioned in the last issue of Tech Talk, the workshop we presented with Lauren Thorpe, Chief Transformation Officer of United Learning Trust, at the Confederation of School Trusts’ annual conference was oversubscribed, with several delegates missing out.
To give as many school leaders as possible the chance to hear about "Building a safe and effective AI environment in schools and trusts" we have organised a webinar version.
The session takes place on Thursday 20th February at 4:00pm. You can register online.
The original workshop attracted plenty of positive feedback from CST conference delegates, including:
“There were many useful pointers and thought provoking ideas to take away”
“The session was excellent. Really glad I went.”
RM broadband wins HFL Education’s heart
Most school broadband connections operate with a direct arrangement between the school and the internet service provider (ISP). But what happens if you want to provide the best connection possible to as many as 500 schools?
For HFL Education it meant conducting a full procurement process to identify the most suitable supplier. HFL Education is the largest schools’ company in the UK, with over 520 school shareholders, dedicated to improving education for young people in Hertfordshire and beyond. As a collaboratively owned school company, HFL operates on a not-for-profit basis.
HFL invited suppliers to tender for a new contract to supply its broadband network service. In addition to requiring a secure, fully resilient and load-balanced internet service, the supplier also needed to provide a central web filtering solution in line with KCSIE statutory guidance.
We were delighted to be the successful bidder and continue our partnership with HFL Education.
Their CEO Carole Bennett said:
“Schools, trusts and settings across the country trust us to deliver the essential services they need to help them run their school at its very best. This new partnership with RM Technology means we can now offer safe, reliable and fast educational connectivity to our customers - at the lowest possible price point, thanks to our procurement strength - at a time when budgets are tight and value for money is more important than ever.”
You can find out more about HFL’s broadband on their website.
In 2025, we’re celebrating 30 years as an ISP. Our continued investment in our own broadband infrastructure means 99.999% availability 24 hours a day, 7 days a week across our network. We also work hard to give our broadband customers access to innovations such as the National Cyber Security Centre’s Protective Domain Name System as standard.
If your school or trust would like to enjoy the same benefits as HFL Education, get in touch today.
RM Unify development
An identity management and single sign-on platform for your school or trust can make setting up access to online applications a breeze. Over 1.5 million users use RM Unify daily to log in to their systems and apps with a single username and password.
During 2024, we worked hard to improve RM Unify users’ experience of the platform and lay the foundations for future development. The highlights are:
·?????? We migrated the cloud-based elements to the latest cloud infrastructure to provide improved scalability and enhanced security.
·?????? We made updates to RM Unify sign-out and single-logout of Single Sign-on apps.
·?????? We have introduced a new ‘pass-through’ setting to avoid duplication of multi-factor authentication when accessing Microsoft 365 via RM Unify.
Keep an eye on our blog for more news of RM Unify updates.?
If you’re not yet using RM Unify in your school, college or trust and would like to find out more about it get in touch today.
That’s all for this month, we hope to see as many people as possible at Bett. We’ll be back with another RM Tech Talk in February.
Follow us on LinkedIn to keep up with the latest on technology for schools, colleges and trusts.
If you missed any previous issues of RM Tech Talk, you can read them in the archive.
We can't wait to see you there!
Marketing Manager at RM plc Content marketing │ inbound │ social │ EdTech │ assessment │ schools
1 个月New masthead graphic too, nice.