Buyer's Guide
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BUYER’S GUIDE The National Desktop & Notebook Agreement People do business. We make it work. T: 0121 281 8618 E: [email protected] W: www.scc.com 1st August 2013 to 31st July 2016 Enhancing the Student Experience through End User Device Lifecycle Management Or Fulfilling Expectations and Improving Learning and Research Outcomes Contents Introducing SCC & Lenovo for Higher Education...........pg. 3 – 5 SCC’s Workshop/How to Buy.......................................pg. 6 Recycling Services........................................................pg. 7 Returns/Warranty Process............................................pg. 8 Supply Chain Services – Configuration Centre..............pg. 9 Leasing Options Available.............................................pg. 10 Why Lenovo are Leading in Education..........................pg. 11 SCC Product Portfolio – Educational Benefits...............pg. 12 – 15 Technical Specification..................................................pg. 16 – 18 Overview of SCC & NDNA............................................pg. 19 Meet the SCC Team.....................................................pg. 20 2 Introducing SCC and Lenovo for Higher Education SCC Desktop or application virtualisation enables We enable people to do business by planning, supplying, IT managers to abstract the user experience, integrating and managing their IT. For 40 years, SCC and thus centralise the user environment, whilst has been delivering IT solutions across the Public Sector, supporting a more flexible client base. Depending resulting in improved efficiency and effective operations on the approach, it allows us to control user of our customers. We have been engaging with the settings, policies, data, applications, and even the Education sector to address the challenges they now operating system (OS), placing them into a virtual face with increased competition in their marketplace and ‘institutional bubble’. Thus we enable access to changes to the funding from central bodies. a well-managed and secured learning/corporate The value SCC delivers is agility. environment, even if users are doing so on an Consumerisation of IT through the proliferation of a unmanaged personal device. plethora of different devices types and better access to So, in summary, IT needs to adapt to the new information has increased user/student expectations and device landscape. Users will increasingly demand reduced the time to change. Institutions need to change more choice in their work devices, so we must much more quickly, and the decision cycle is shorter. create infrastructures that are far less device and The information required to make these decisions should operating system centric to achieve this. be more available. On the positive side, the investments required are smaller but there are many more of them. The risk is consequently minimised and under better control. Starting the “Consumerisation” discussion SCC is working to address these elements through a So what are we, or should we, be trying to achieve? number of initiatives, operating through the national In simple terms the desire to communicate with our education frameworks including the NDNA. institution requires a change in language from a ‘techie Our heritage was established in desktop computing. speak’ approach to a simpler language that describes the This has now transformed into an approach that capability we are offering. From our experience working considers how SCC can develop an institutions capability with a number of Universities these are some of the to provide secure access to data and information elements that we have seen described to us time and from any place at any time. This considers not only time again. Do they look familiar? individual end user devices, but additional multimedia • Make it better, but please make it faster based communications including digital signage, I don’t want to wait 15 minutes for my device to be visual communications and desk-based secure online ready to use collaborations. The result is increased productivity and • The Martini Principle - Improved productivity and time to decision. flexible working Allow me to use the device that best suits me, my work/learning style and productivity needs, when Desktop or Application Virtualisation and where I need to A myriad of different personal devices accessing • Simple access control the corporate network presents some key I forget passwords, give me one access method for problems for your IT department. How do you offer everything not one for each element I need to access your students/staff a uniform experience without compromising your existing infrastructure? • Business Agility I need to be able to meet tough deadlines and What approach do you choose? Application learning objectives, and to enable me to stay ahead virtualisation? Desktop virtualisation? Traditional of the game client deployment? We would suggest it is going to be a mixture of these elements, and not so much a case of one or another. 3 • I want to attract the best and brightest, laptop thinking and will get us to the right answer. A and keep them holistic and device agnostic approach is by far the best We want to be seen as a leading institution and way to approach this, coupled with input, exchange of University of choice when targeting new students, ideas and feedback, to and from the staff and student and retaining existing ones users. • Improved student/customer perception Access I want my students/customers to recognise that we How do your users access your environments? With understand how technology enables better learning, many users now wishing to use their own personal collaboration and research. devices for learning or staff work, the problem is both • Reduced support overhead protection of intellectual property and a duty of care to It’s got to the point where I don’t want to call the new consumerised user. You must ensure that you support…I want to be able to do some things myself, only control your corporate data and do not damage without needing to call support all the time destroy or otherwise interrogate users’ personal devices inappropriately. The 4 A’s of Agility – The making of the The University now knows far less about the devices that modern client landscape are accessing, the networks they are accessing from From a technology standpoint though, we do understand and hence the suitability of that device to be granted some of the key elements needed to effect this change. access to data. We must then consider methods such SCC has called these ‘The four A’s of agility’. They are as certificates to begin to address the challenges relating some simple principles that every IT professional should to normal user name and password based access consider when exploring the mobility and modernisation methods from ‘trusted’ devices. Indeed, now we should of what we used to call “the desktop”. be considering protecting the data and not the device itself. As such we must become more data centric in our To create this strategic approach, we have taken our early thinking, focusing on the “who is asking, for what, from experience of consumerisation, and our 38 year history where and on what device” rather than the blanket pre- and capability around the desktop to highlight four factors authenticated access based method of old. that will help deliver the right institutional IT solution into the modern University. However the access protocols should not become unnecessarily burdensome, or complex, so that you Abstraction maintain governance and control in a simple intuitive way. This is the first and most important key to With this approach you can ensure that you are enforcing consumerisation and the next generation desktop. a policy that maintains your end users as good citizens, Simply put, this is the separation of hardware from the even on their own devices. operating system, the “apps” and the user, to create an environment where corporate data lives in a virtual Availability space rather than on the physical device. This has several In the new world of public cloud services such as advantages, including enabling you to begin to deal with Office365, Google, Twitter and Facebook, there is no personal devices, 3rd party collaboration, and existing time for down time. Users just expect applications to task and information worker demands, whilst keeping work whenever they want to use them, whether that is corporate and personal worlds truly separate. 10:00am or 02:00am! The instant willingness to deal with that midnight email is a real challenge for IT, let alone the Applications institution itself. This is critical to the success of the new world You need to look at what applications need to be environment. How do your users access applications available and when. It is also an ideal opportunity to today? With many users now wishing to use their own consider which applications need to be run in-house and personal devices for work, both IPR protection and which applications you could out task to either private or a duty of care to the ‘Bring your own Device’ (BYOD) public cloud services. or consumerised user, need to be considered. Which applications lend themselves to being mobilised? Which Allowing access to email and calendaring from a variety should, or could be done quickly and cost effectively? of new devices, both personal and corporate, is usually Which will deliver the biggest institutional benefit if the first and most obvious step with many institutions mobilised? Which need more thought and development, already taking advantage of Microsoft’s “free” Office365 and which will be replaced as part of this initiative? for staff and students. With suitable mobile device management (MDM) controls in place this is also a Many Universities are already considering their mobile relatively simple and popular first step. application strategy. This is the most important factor to consider alongside the more traditional desktop and 4 The question is, once delivered, what is the plan on day Customer Management Team 2 and 3 and day 100? Once the users have tasted the SCC invests heavily in understanding the technology new world they will be keen for more.