I'm in my 12th year of working in a UK school and we've average a budget of about £32,000 a year over that time. When I started here, the first thing I did was stopped using the council's hardware provision service and set up accounts with a multitude of vendors. Dropped Windows on servers and started using Linux until the OVS agreement came in and the price dropped and at the first opportunity we dropped the council's broadband provision of 10Mb/s fibre for £18,000 a year, negotiating our own agreement with BT for an unmanaged 100Mb/s line for £8,000 a year.
BSF came and went with us being quoted £150,000 pa for no on-sight network management and a single tech who wouldn't be allowed to touch anything without permission from head office.
Thank a convenient deity that that crock was killed off. We have two people permanently on site for £60,000 less than a private contractor would charge and >99.9% uptimes, expanding as we go by using refurbs.
Doing everything in-house keeps the costs right down.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
