Why have we selected IBM/Lenovo computers?

One of our responsibilities as the IT department to the University is to find that fine balance between providing effective Total Cost of Ownership (known as TCO worldwide) and providing hardware which is sufficient for the needs of the University.

In saying this, the University of Adelaide is leading many other Universities Australia wide in TCO. This has been enabled by centralisation (remove duplication) of IT services and to provide reliable, standard hardware (in our case, IBM/Lenovo).   World wide studies have seen where this can save the business anywhere from 20% to 40% in savings.   ITS can say that this has easily been achieved through the daily support that we offer compared to a few years ago.

IBM/Lenovo was chosen by a Uni panel of academics, finance staff and ITS.   The selection is an open process with participants from the academic and administrative areas in partnership with ITS, and take into account that we are not only selecting hardware, but also a supply chain partner.   ITS thoroughly tested hardware quality such as internal quality of parts (some brands use cheap internal parts to keep their cost down), to effective cooling, number of local staff in S.A, world wide reliability figures of their product and warranty processes.   IBM/Lenovo was the chosen product for many reasons including:

• class leading warranty recall issues (currently 1.9% for the Uni). We were at approx 15% with a different supplier and recalls on batteries etc.
•  Australian presence for escalations (IBM have their call centre in Brisbane - not overseas). Many local technicians are also located in S.A. for prompt work.

There are basically two types of PC's on offer in the market place.

• business PC's
• home PC's.

The home PC's (Alienware, clones etc ) are PC's which change to the latest technology ASAP. This is advantageous for people who need high end powerful PC's to run the latest games etc. This regular change of hardware is not advantageous for a business environment and increases the cost of ownership to the University substantially.  

The business based PC's (IBM/Lenovo etc) do not move to the latest technology ASAP.   They wait until it is proven and reliable. The other reason for this is to have a long model life.   This enables the business to not have to change their images, drivers etc on a regular basis.   Current model lives for IBM is 12 - 18 months.  Though business PC's are driven by technology changes like Pentium they ensure the image itself does not change.  Home based PC's could change every few weeks.

Other Universities run a decentralised network.   Some have a centralised helpdesk but if an issue cannot be solved the work is passed onto the local team of LCO's therefore their desktop support is decentralised.   As we have seen in our University, the TCO to the business is much greater in this scenario. Each department are running different hardware and they all support themselves internally which replicates support.   Some Universities also has more than one supplier which causes many different models within the same department which creates more work in images, drivers etc for that local team of LCO's and increase the support costs internally to that department.

ITS recognises that there are instances where a high end PC is required.   We see this in some Science and Health Sciences departments where high graphics or processing power is required. IBM/Lenovo do have some higher end PC's which are available through Commander but still may not meet the end users needs.   In this case we allow and fully support non standard hardware. We cannot provide all the models that IBM/Lenovo offer on the order page so only the most commonly purchase models are displayed.

If a high end PC is required, we recommend that you ask Commander to find a suitable IBM/Lenovo.   This gives the IT department better resources (technical escalations, online warranty processing in place, next day onsite contract etc) therefore better end support for the user.   If an IBM/Lenovo model is not suitable then Commander can find another brand which can suit your needs.

I hope this helps explain why we have our current structure of one supplier and why the supplier is IBM/Lenovo.