Few Small Businesses actually put a lot of thought into their desktops and laptop deployments. Most, in fact, turn to Dell or Best Buy to purchase a new PC and hope that it's the right thing. Some turn to a local OEM instead, who builds them a more customized machine, but it's still a one or two off purchase.

At L2TC, we try to help clients understand their IT investment and how to maximize their purchase. Traditionally one of the first ways Small Businesses can improve their ROI and lower their TCO is to separate their Hardware and Software assets. Which is to say purchase hardware and software on a schedule independent of release dates, rather on their own schedule. This way they can more easily standardize their computing environment and lower their management and training costs. They are in control of their infrastructure rather than being at the mercy of the hardware and software vendors to buy and/or upgrade. There is a much larger discussion to this, but for the purposes of this, I will limit my rant to our Deployment Services.

We specialize in deploying large, and small, numbers of PCs to organizations. One of the key elements of this is the ability to push a desktop image onto a desktop or laptop from a centralized location. From a base image and using native tools we can manage and maintain the client computing environment, and teach onsite administrators how to do the same. While the tools were primarily developed to manage large scale deployments, the beauty is that it can be scaled down to meet the demands of practically any size organization. As part of our larger discussion of management we tend to match deployments of users and PCs along rolls based needs. Accountants, CSRs, Execs, Administrative Types, Sales, etc…this way as a user is added, removed, or replaced there is a role for them to fit into. After the initial roll is filled it can be customized to fit the individual. Using this approach we can lower the Total Cost of Ownership of a PC by as much as 50%. A properly managed network environment will make it more agile and able to properly fill the needs of the users.

With the onset of Windows 7 and the retirement of Windows XP, small businesses need to have a clear understanding of how to migrate to the new client platform and be ready to do it on their own terms, rather than being dictated to by hardware manufacturers… At L2TC we can help you setup an infrastructure ready for Windows 7 and Office 2010!

For more information feel free to contact

Ray Watters @ (773) 634-9369