UK schools give system supplier Bromcom an F for Azure uptime

Management software stumbles at start of term, leaving staff unable to track attendance or reach parents

UK school management information system (MIS) provider Bromcom has had a bad start to the academic year after its Azure-based service left staff struggling to track student attendance, let alone access contact details for parents and guardians.

Although Bromcom's status page reports issues with the company's services, it still claims "99 percent uptime" over the last 90 days. However, considering that a large chunk of that was vacation time for UK schools, it's really only the last week or so that will be of the most concern.

During that time, the wheels really seemed to come off. Even the status page says: "Some Resources are Severe Degradation" [sic].

Away from the status page, Bromcom has kept users updated on its troubles. On August 31, Bromcom increased resources on its cloud system "to help make the return to school run as smoothly as possible."

However, by September 4, something had gone wrong. According to Bromcom, "one of our servers developed a serious fault... This has caused some ongoing instability when users are connected to that server."

Over the next few days, the system was either very slow or totally down despite multiple restarts. On the morning of September 9, five days after the problems began, the company reported: "The system performance appears to have improved."

That's a great comfort to affected schools, we're sure. One source who wished to remain anonymous told us: "The impact it is having means schools are finding it difficult to check what students they have in the building, complete fire registers, or even get parental contact details. Tasks that should take a minute are taking hours as you have to keep refreshing the page until you get connected to an instance that works."

The Register asked Bromcom to comment, but the company has not responded. The UK's Department for Education calls an MIS "a critical part of a school's digital infrastructure," but, other than a document on how a school might select an MIS, it does not have much in the way of regulatory guidance.

"Many suppliers," the department's document notes, "will not guarantee that their systems will function and be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."

A spokesperson for the department told The Register: "Educational settings in England are responsible for maintaining their IT systems, so there is no specific guidance or regulation around it."

Based on its performance so far in the new school year, Bromcom's Azure-based service has indeed not been available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. ®