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The SIMS Technical Roadmap is produced by Capita to provide customers with a detailed overview of any software infrastructure they might need to deploy in order to run the SIMS Product suite. It has been developed in response to and inline with customer feedback to enable Local Authorities, Schools and Academies to effectively plan their future support of SIMS over a two year period.
The following end of support dates for SIMS on certain Microsoft products have recently been highlighted at the Schools ICT SIMS User Groups which have been held around the county. To ensure that SIMS will continue to function correctly within your school, it is important that you make provision to have updated any software for which support HAS ALREADY ENDED. For information the key end of support dates to be aware of are:
| Microsoft Product | Last Supported SIMS Release was | Upgrade to |
| Windows XP SP3 | Summer 2013 | Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 10 |
| Office 2007 | Autumn 2015 | Office 2010, 2013 or 2016 |
|
Windows Server 2003 |
Summer 2013 |
Windows Server 2012 |
| SQL Server 2008/2008R2 | Spring 2015 | SQL Server 2012 or 2014 |
Further explanation of these end of support dates is detailed below:
Windows XP SP3
The last supported SIMS release that was guaranteed to run on Windows XP was Summer 2013 so you should get any computers running SIMS upgraded to Windows 7 or Windows 8 as soon as possible.
Office 2007
The last supported SIMS release that was guaranteed to work with Microsoft Office 2007 was Autumn 2015. You must therefore get any computers running SIMS upgraded to Office 2010, 2013 or 2016 as soon as possible.
Windows 2003 Server
The last supported SIMS release that was guaranteed to run on Windows 2003 Server was Summer 2013. You must therefore get any servers running SIMS upgraded to Windows 2012 as soon as possible.
Further details of software support dates relating to SIMS can be found in the SIMS Technical Roadmap.
In addition to the requirement to upgrade certain Microsoft Products to continue to be able to run SIMS, you should also be aware that Schools ICT is recommending that schools look to replace or upgrade all computers running Windows XP as the operating system and upgrade Microsoft Office 2003 prior to April 2014. Microsoft will no longer support those products from that date onwards. More information on this can be found in the Microsoft Products Life Cycles article on this website
