MARKET REPORT Vertical Horizon
£42bn is the widely quoted average
bill that a PBX hack will cost
a company
KEY FACTS:
• Total spending on schools in England represented just under
£42billion in 2017–18 (in 2018–19 prices). This represents £4,700 per
pupil at primary school and £6,200 per pupil at secondary school.
• Total school spending per pupil fell by 8% in real terms between
2009–10 and 2017–18
• Schools’ costs increased more slowly than inflation between 2010–11
and 2015–16, but grew faster than inflation afterwards.
• Participation in full-time 16–18 education has more than doubled since
the 1980s but has been a big loser from education spending changes
over the last 25 years.
• 19+ further education is sharply focused on apprenticeships.
19+ apprenticeship spending now represents 36% of total adult
education funding, as opposed to 13% in 2010.
• Universities receive £28,200 per student to fund the cost of teaching
their degrees. This is almost 60% higher than the level in 1997–98,
largely as a result of the tuition fee reforms in 2006.
Source: Institute for Fiscal Studies
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measures and policy changes
has culminated in several new
challenges and opportunities
for those of us in the channel,
such as helping upgrade schools
and classrooms from resembling
the last remaining bastions
of chalk blackboards and
heavily annotated textbooks, to
modern spaces of learning and
development where students can
learn the skills of tomorrow.
“First and foremost, the
public education sector is in a
financial crisis. Despite the UK
government declaring that more
money than ever before is being
pumped into schools across the
country, one does not need to
stray too far to notice that they
are struggling. In fact, schools
are struggling to the extent that
many can’t keep their heads
above water. For those who
pride ourselves on catering to
this vertical, many have been
challenged to cope with the
drops in business and profits as
a result of these cuts.
However, there is a silver
lining. With the recent
44 | Comms Business Magazine | June 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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proliferation of as-a-service
offers, new technology
has not only become more
accessible and affordable but
also ingrained in the new
curriculum. To cater to the
needs of the modern-day
workforce, schools have started
to not only introduce courses
on software development
and computer sciences to
their students but are also
deploying new technologies
to help optimise their own
workflows. As a result, they are
now looking to the channel for
guidance on how to identify
which platforms offer the
most complete and easy to use
solutions to leverage.
Subsequently, new
opportunities have arisen in
the channel for those of us
willing to adapt to today’s
‘digital’ landscape. At ALE,
we’ve seen considerable interest
in the products in our cloud
communication portfolio such
as our Rainbow Cloud Platform
as a Service (CPaaS) and
unified communications (UC)
solution and the related online
developer hub. With a desire
to enable better collaboration
and communication process
across various campus’ and
to develop applications that
can easily be integrated into
specific workflows, the channel
is essentially looking to ‘refresh’
its practices and update the
way it operates. What’s more,
it is looking towards the cloud
as a more affordable means of
acquiring new technology as
this type of technology tends
to not only be available on
a flexible monthly duration,
but also includes the ongoing
maintenance fees.
By leveraging our
communication platform as a
service (CPaaS) channels and
end users can add considerable
value to their own environment.
As an example, we have been
able to provide a fully integrated
emergency mass notification
system for a school. This system
has enabled staff to initiate a
lockdown protocol in the event
of an emergency, directly from
within the Rainbow client and
from multiple devices including
PCs, mobiles and desk phones.
This kind of approach
has enabled us and our
channel partners to adopt
a more consultative sales
approach when negotiating
with opportunities in the
education vertical. Vendors
and our channel partners can
no longer simply compete on
price and feature set alone
(commoditistion is a ‘race to the
bottom’) when tendering for
opportunities. Instead, we need
to define the value we bring
and position our portfolios in
favour of more modern, bespoke
and flexible approaches. In
support of this approach, ALE
has developed a University
Partnership Program that
provides equipment, support
and developer kits for our
customers to explore integrating
Rainbow into their workflow,
website or campus mobile app,
and leveraging location-based
services for applications such as
way-finding and geofencing.”
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