The educational publisher Pearson is rumoured to be the favourite to take a steak in online multimedia curriculum service provider Espresso following an article in the Independent on Sunday.
PricewaterhouseCoopers, who have been tasked with finding potential investors for Expresso have been in contact with a number of interested parties, but Pearson, owner of Penguin books and The FT have emerged as hot favourite, in a bid to strengthen their publishing arm and move further into multimedia delivery.
Espresso is looking for additional cash to fund international growth of their core multimedia service. Chief executive Lewis Bronze, company co-founder, is positive about the move:
This is a highly positive development in the company’s evolution and I am fully committed to driving it forward, and key to that is getting the right partner. We have a unique service and we want to take the company to more places around the world.
Despite the fact that Espresso is already moving into international markets, the company feels it needs the ability to grow rapidly to take advantage of opportunities while they are available. With many international Government’s now cottoning onto digital cirricilum delivery, Espresso feels it needs to move fast to secure strong market positions that mirror its standing in the UK education industry.
admin Industry News Espresso, Investment, Pearson, school software
School software applications that can communicate and work together seamlessly are fast becoming a top priority for key decision makers, according to a recent survey.
The survey, carried out annually by Pearson Phoenix at the BETT Show revealed that 45% of respondents felt interoperability between applications was a top priority, with 37% choosing reporting and just 18% putting administration at the top of the list.
The results indicate that schools are favouring software and applications that can be ‘joined-up’ reducing the need to duplicate admin tasks and for additional data entry.
Headway has been made by Becta to standardise interoperability through the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF), which’ll become become the standard framework for all MIS systems by 2010 to allow integration with other applications to be quick and easy.
These changes may require some school software suppliers to make changes to their current products, which could be a complex and expensive task. However, in the long run it appears to be a positive move to improve the level of intergration between systems and therefore ultimately benefiting the end users!
admin Industry News Becta, BETT Show, MIS, school software, SIF, software suppliers, system interoperability
RM Logo
School IT supplier RM has today announced trading results in line with expectations in the period from 1 October 2008 to 6 February 2009.
In its interim report, the company stated:
The group had seen no indications of a decrease in spending in its markets. This remains the case and trading is in line with management’s plan in the Group’s three areas of activity.
The company also reported:
RM’s business is seasonal reflecting buying patterns in the schools marketplace, with a large majority of the year’s profit arising in the second half. In addition, the first quarter of the Group’s financial year is the lowest for revenue and order intake. As a consequence of these factors, performance at this stage is not a reliable indicator of the outcome for the full financial year.
This good financial position is a reflection of the dominance of the company within the industry, coupled with the signing of a number of lucrative contracts both in the UK (as part of the BSF programme), and in the US.
The company’s results for the second half of the financial year will make interesting reading and will give a much clearer vision of the future of RM and the industry in general.
admin Supplier News Financial Results, IT Suppliers, RM, School IT, school software
Data security in schools
The TES today reported that at least 20 schools in and around the UK have have their websites hacked and content replaced with hardcore porn.
All the sites were running the out of date versions of the popular open source VLE Moodle.
Whilst it’s important to stress that the schools firewall’s would have blocked any such content being viewable from within the schools, it does somewhat dent the reputation and creditability of the website providers and schools involved.
However, there is a much wider issue here that needs to be addressed. As more and more applications, services and software products aimed at the education market head towards web-based formats, encompassing the Software as a Service (SaaS) business model, suppliers need to treat data and system security as a top priority. SaaS products are really leading innovation and progress in the education software market at the moment, and it’s great to see. They have some real benefits over traditional desktop based applications, and can be delivered at a fraction of the cost. It will be a great shame for schools to have to shy away from these products due to concerns over data security.
This isn’t an issue specific to the education industry; just this week Sage, the accountancy software giant has had to temporarily pull the plug on it’s new web-based accounting software due to serious security issues.
The ball is very much now in the software supplier’s court, to further improve on data security, as without doing so, schools will have no option but to stick with traditional, desktop based software for the forseeable future – which’ll be a terrible blow to the industry.
admin Industry News data security, school data protection, school software, websites hacked
