The University of Natal has selected Dell as its preferred hardware supplier of desktops. The establishment caters for 2 500 staff members and about 23 000 students.
IT director at the university, Duncan Greaves, commented: "We use Dell PCs throughout the university as our standard desktop equipment. We also employ quite a few Dell servers, and some of our academics and senior support staff use Dell notebooks."
Prior to standardising on Dell, the University of Natal used a variety of clones, leaving the university with a fair amount of non-Dell equipment still in use, something it plans to change within the next four years.
The decision to change to a single Tier 1 supplier was two-fold. According to Greaves, the first argument in favour of a Tier 1 machine was its ability to reduce total cost of ownership. "Secondly, as we work towards more coherently managing the university`s IT infrastructure, including its PC asset base, we found that having a managed machine was critical to us achieving this."
However, the university did not select Dell without evaluating other Tier 1 machines available in the market. "We looked at Compaq, IBM, HP and Dell, which all performed well. But on a rigorous multi-criteria selection system, which was software-driven and designed to preclude bias, Dell came out on top," adds Greaves.
According to Leigh Hancock, product-marketing manager at Dell, low failure rate is a noted benefit of Dell hardware, but there are others as well.
"Our warranty service is something the university considers vital."
Greaves adds that an effective desktop management interface as well as clean management information was key benefits of the Dell offer. "Reliable equipment has enhanced staff productivity, while reduced support calls have allowed technical support staff to concentrate on being productive in areas such as solution development, rather than simply putting out `fires` the whole time."
He does, however, note that there is to be a change in the university` acquisition policy. "We are managing the productive life of our PC equipment by changing to a rental rather than an ownership scheme, leaving us with the best of technologies at the flattest rates."
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