When Sappi Kraft, a division of Sappi Forest Products, decided to replace and upgrade all the PC hardware at its Tugela, Cape and Ngodwana plants - from desktops, thin client terminals and notebooks - it envisaged a logistical nightmare.
But that was until independent IT solutions provider, First Technology, proposed Altiris, a fully comprehensive desktop management solution which effectively cut the deployment time in half, removing most of the manual grind associated with large PC deployments.
And at the end of the R4 million project, Sappi was left with a management tool that should result in significant savings into the future.
Altiris software addresses all areas of PC ownership, from deployment; software and problem management; to help desk and problem resolution; maintenance and support; and inventory and asset management.
First Technology holds the highest Altiris accreditation in SA: the company is the only Altiris Business partner in the region.
According to John Thomas, Account Manager at First Technology, by using the Altiris tool, Sappi was able not only to deploy its new Compaq PCs cost-effectively, but did so in considerably less time than a manual roll-out would have taken - with far less disruption to Sappi personnel.
"A manual deployment would have worked like this: the PCs, notebooks and servers would have had to be delivered to First Technology`s prepping centre where a corporate image would be loaded on to each desktop unit, and an OS deployed.
"These units would then have been delivered to the regions and an engineer would have had to go around the site, physically deploying each unit, connecting it to the network and trying to find out which applications and data would have to be transferred for that user. This would have been expensive and time-consuming," Thomas explains.
"But because we used Altiris for deployment, all desktops were delivered directly to the region. A set up centre within SAPPI was then used to prepare the units and fully configure them including all their personal settings and data. The units were then assigned to a user and delivered. It was quickly attached to the network and was fully manageable immediately, reducing user downtime.
"And now that Altiris has been deployed, Sappi will be able to support its desktop environment without ever having to dispatch an engineer unless it is physical hardware failure.
"In addition, Altiris will enable Sappi to install new software programs or upgrades on all its PCs and workstations around the country within minutes. In the past, a technician would have had to physically go to each machine to load new software," he adds.
"But despite software installations being undertaken remotely, Altiris ensures the users` personal settings for each desktop machine remains unchanged.
"Similarly, in the case of a virus, a patch can be dropped onto the entire organisation`s system within minutes to resolve the problem. And in the case of a system crash, a registry backup would have been taken of each PC and quickly restored within minutes," Thomas says.
Stan Faul, information services manager for Sappi Kraft, says First Technology and Altiris eliminated what would have been an enormous headache for his department.
"The entire switch to the new hardware went off far more smoothly than we had ever thought possible. Altiris made the deployment fast and seamless, as well as cost- and time-effective. And with the ongoing management provided by the Altiris tool, we anticipate significant reduction in the total cost of ownership of this hardware," he concludes.
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Altiris helps reduce PC lifecycle management costs.
According to internationally respected IT research company, Gartner, the initial cost of desktop PC is only 20% of the total cost. This implies that physical failure and software support issues contribute a major portion to the `other` costs.
Altiris takes care of the following processes:
Deploys or removes software
Cloning and configuration
Remotely maintaining computers
Hardware and software management
Failure/disaster recovery
OS and other software upgrades
Restoration of PCs back to original state
Backup of PCs
Remote control and chat for assistance
Personality migration
Manage PC changes, updates, patches, service packs and more
Implement and maintain standards
Manage mobile computers
All these processes can be done from a centrally controlled management consol, readily reducing the time taken per task. This has two effects: it reduces the costs of supporting desktops through the reduction in having to dispatch an engineer every time a fault occurs and secondly, through an increase in service levels.
First Technology
First Technology is one of SA`s largest, independent IT solutions providers, offering customers solutions and services that maximise business productivity, reduce the risk associated with deploying new technologies and minimise the total cost of IT ownership. The company has fully-fledged branches in every major business node across SA and maintains one of the largest teams of highly skilled technical personnel in the country.
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