Current State Opportunity
Potential ($) • Workstations refers to the procurement, maintenance and support of both desktops and laptops. This would also include costs and
activities related to virtual desktops. The scope of this analysis is focused on workstations that are issued and managed by the central IT departments and does not include those purchased and maintained by individual faculties or research groups.
• Workstations management varies in the degree of control that the central IT department has over the desktops and laptops that are deployed within the institutions. The larger research institutions tend to have higher levels of decentralization while colleges and smaller institutions in general tend to have higher levels of centralization.
• Fewer than half of the in-scope institutions indicated in interviews that faculty computers are issued by the central IT department. • Makes and models of workstations vary across the in-scope institutions. Smaller institutions will often have longer refresh cycles for
workstations in order to reduce annual capital costs and effort related to workstation refresh. Others purchase used machines from other sectors in order to reduce capital costs.
• BCNet is preparing to issue a Request for Proposal for workstations that includes provisions for the entire sector to gain access to the negotiated pricing if they choose to. The contract will include escalating sector-wide volume discounts meaning that broader participation will increase savings for all participating.
• The Government of BC has a wide reaching agreement with IBM for the provision of desktop and laptop computers and support
Recurring benefits Low High ~$0.5M ~$1M Investments Low High See shared procurement investment outline (slide 39)
# Current Challenges Example Practices Potential
Opportunities
1
• Workstation procurement is managed separately at each institution meaning that institutions are potentially overpaying on a per-unit basis
• Deloitte benchmarks in education suggest that institutions who strategically source and rationalize hardware purchases can save an additional 5-10% over and above existing discounts for the education sector
• Shared
procurement of desktop and laptop hardware
Additional considerations and example practices
• Institutions have had success bringing faculty workstations into their portfolio by demonstrating the cost advantages that come from leveraging the scale of the central IT department.
• The Government of BC has a large Workstation contract with IBM that includes services as well as capital purchasing details. This contract was considered in this analysis but was not put forward as a potential option due to a lack of fit with the service delivery and cost model and resistance to centralized
workstation support within the sector.
• Another potential area to drive savings in the sector is through desktop virtualization, When surveyed, institutions reported that the average price paid for a desktop computer were between ~$750 and ~$1,250 (Source: Gartner - PC Hardware Replacement Strategies: Desktop
• PCs, Thin Clients and Zero Clients). Because virtual desktops perform less processing at the local level, the costs for these machines is significantly lower. According to Gartner, thin-client prices can range from $150 to $600 per client while zero-client prices are even lower, ranging from $50 to $300. While some larger institutions have begun virtualizing their desktops, smaller institutions are less likely to have done so. A move to virtualized desktops is dependent upon reliable bandwidth connectivity which could be a barrier for some of these smaller institutions.
# Potential Opportunities
Quantitative Benefits and Investments
Tier
Benefits Investments
Low High Low High
1 • Shared procurement of desktop and laptop
hardware ~$0.5M ~$1M
See shared procurement
investment outline (slide 39) Tier 1
Opportunity Profile – Workstations
Primary benefit driver • The primary benefit driver of shared workstation procurement is an increased discount from list price on desktops
and laptops
Institutions most likely to benefit
• The institutions most likely to benefit from this opportunity are those that regularly refresh their capital but do not have a large enough scale to command significant discounts from vendors
• Smaller institutions who refresh equipment on an ‘as needed’ basis and/or purchase used equipment are less likely to see a financial benefit from this opportunity. For those institutions, the primary benefit will be access to higher quality equipment at a price point that they would not normally have access to.
Opportunity Profile – Workstations
Qualitative Benefits Implementation Risks and Considerations • A shared contract for workstation procurement will reduce the
administrative burden associated with tendering and contract management that is currently duplicated across the 25 institutions
• A single contract for the sector could increase service levels for institutions that are currently purchasing used hardware and/or retaining assets for longer than 5 years
• Allowing institutions to refresh hardware at a lower cost would reduce the demand for end-user support and increase employee productivity for those that are currently using workstations that are beyond their ideal refresh date
• For those institutions that currently refresh their workstations on an as- needed basis or purchase used workstations, there may not be savings to be had by purchasing new machines, regardless of the discount available • The shared workstations contract should be structured such that faculty
members have access to the terms of the agreement but, given the difficulties in moving them to purchasing contracts made by central IT at each institution, the estimates should be done based only on those machines currently managed by the IT departments
• Institutions interested in leveraging a shared workstation procurement contract should commit to participating prior to the RFP being generated. This will maximize the cost benefits of the joint procurement.
Governance Considerations
• The contract should be brokered by the shared service structure with member institutions signing on to participate
• The shared service structure would also be responsible for vendor management