Dell’s channel partner program, PartnerDirect, continues to go from strength to strength across the globe. Here in EMEA we’ve had particular success building a pipeline of case studies which showcase the capabilities of Dell Certified Partners. Over the coming weeks I’ll be blogging about some of these great success stories which demonstrate the true value-add that Dell partners are bringing to the mix.
We start with a challenge facing the Stoke Damerel Community College in Plymouth, England, a centre for academic excellence which is rated highly by Ofsted, the UK governing body for Standards in Education. The college had 900 computers across the campus – and numbers were growing, as was energy consumption and students’ storage demands. When the infrastructure came to the end of its lifecycle, the IT department seized on the opportunity introduce the very latest Dell technologies and went about a total re-design.
It was with Dell Partner Deverill that the college discovered the key to simplicity: consolidation and virtualization. The team attended a lunch-and-learn session with Deverill to review potential solutions and were impressed at how easy it was to manage Dell EqualLogic storage arrays. Implementation went ahead without any disruption to students and teachers, and the result is a new consolidated virtual environment based on Dell™ PowerEdge™ servers and a Dell EqualLogic storage area network. The college has consolidated IT by around 50 per cent, giving it space to expand in the future. And with high levels of automation, the IT team now saves two days a month. Now I guess it’s the teachers and students who have the opportunity to work harder. Deverill’s great solution has enabled the college to halve backup times so that jobs no longer overrun into Saturdays and Sundays. And apparently teachers are already saying they can now get more work done at the weekends.
Kudos to Deverill who did such a great job overcoming Stoke Damerel’s challenges with state-of-the-art Dell solutions. And with extra storage space for student coursework, and barely any disruption during the installation, it seems that Ofsted will be even more pleased next time they visit Plymouth!
You can download the full case study here at the Dell Partner Showcase, where you’ll also find additional case studies featuring Dell Certified Partners.