Appliance Deployment Featured Article

Dell (News - Alert), a provider of technology solutions, services and support is now offering customers better choice for IT appliance deployment and migration through its Dell Optimized Deployment services.

The service enables organizations deploying laptops, desktops and associated operating systems to build upon the advantages provided by Dell KACE (News - Alert) and Microsoft SCCM/MDT (Microsoft Deployment Toolkit).

Since the images created though the Dell KACE K2000 Appliance and SCCM are not tied to a specific system, customers can easily transition from HP, Lenovo or Acer (News - Alert) to Dell. The K2000 appliance deployment solution streamlines image creation and maintenance by eliminating manual steps from the deployment process.

"Employee productivity is directly influenced by the tools provided by IT, which is why it's so important that systems are deployed quickly and without incident,” said Jan Uhrich, vice president, services and solutions group, Dell, in a statement. “Dell Optimized Deployment helps ensure seamless system and software migration.”

Built on Dell's patented approach and technology, Dell Optimized Deployment Services reduce the amount of technician labor and complex logistics required for PC and OS deployments, including Windows 7 migrations.

The appliance deployment solution integrates OS imaging and configuration, application installation, and user data and settings migration into a single automated process, allowing end-users to run their process quickly with little to no downtime, or even follow up on support required.

Unlike traditional appliance deployment models that require technicians to spend a significant amount of time at each client device, Dell Optimized Deployment Services can save customers up to 55 percent on IT deployment costs.

“We've created an advantage for our customers by reducing deployment times to mere minutes, giving time back to IT staff and boosting end-user productivity,” Uhrich added.

Dell also provides a fixed-scope service that allows administrators to add a combination of different services like data migration, asset tagging, image load, application load, and asset resale and recycling service.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers promise lower cloud computing costs, easy scalability and a high level of security, but still, only 10 percent of U.S. firms have taken the plunge and adopted cloud deployments, says a TMCnet report. More surprisingly, only 10 percent plan to do so within the next two years.

According to NEI, a provider of server appliance deployment solutions, companies adopting a cloud option “accept the premise their costs will be reduced, while those approximately 40 percent of firms well informed on cloud solutions but not adopting them reject the claim their costs will be reduced.”