Faster PC Deployment Starts With an Optimized Corporate Image

When you get a new laptop or tablet, you want it to start quickly and give you fast access to all the applications you need—and you want your applications to be highly responsive.

The foundation for fast, high-performing mobile devices is an optimized corporate image. This can be created and managed in-house, but the do-it-yourself (DIY) approach is expensive, inefficient and prone to the kind of errors that result in excessive help-desk calls and frustrating productivity losses.

It’s hard to believe that any enterprise organization would still invest the time and effort required to create and manage corporate images in-house. Gartner estimates that DIY imaging can cost $300 per device, which means you’re approaching $1 million if you’re planning a 3,000-unit hardware refresh. In-house imaging requires setting up a physical staging area, distracting IT staff from more strategic activities, and shipping devices twice if you have multiple locations: once to where you’re doing the imaging and once to its final destination.

Cut your imaging costs by 50 percent

The good news is that you can cut the costs of creating, loading and managing your corporate images in half—and make better use of your IT staff time—by letting your computer vendor do it for you.

First of all, this lets you take advantage of valuable economies of scale. The best computer vendors have dedicated teams of imaging services technicians who do nothing else. Lenovo engineers, for example, have delivered more than 8 million custom images for more than 3,000 customers. See how they do it below:

Organizations also benefit from the expertise of these imaging specialists. Lenovo technicians have developed close relationships with Microsoft and other software providers to help their clients adapt to changing business and technology needs. Most enterprise IT departments, on the other hand, just don’t have the knowledge required to build an optimized image: Doing it right takes a meticulous, structured approach of carefully layering all applicable operating systems and applications in the correct order.

Having an optimized image from the start can significantly reduce your ongoing maintenance requirements and improve the productivity of your mobile end users.

Factory-loaded images can also be more easily managed, shifting expensive, labor-intensive IT services to an automated process leveraging industry best practices.

Improve your PC performance

The benefits of letting your computer vendor optimize your image aren’t only experienced in the offices of the CFO and CIO. End users also benefit from devices that boot up and respond with impressive speed.

As part of its imaging process, Lenovo employs its Enhanced Experience 3 (EE 3) to optimize system files, processes and hardware settings for quicker boot and shutdown times—while still initializing critical security features like anti-virus software. EE 3 PCs installed with Windows 7 start 40 percent faster with Lenovo’s RapidBoot technology compared to a typical Windows 7 PC. And the new BootShield innovation allows notebook devices to maintain fast boot performance even when multiple applications are installed over the life of your system.

Rely on the corporate imaging leader

Lenovo transition consultants and engineers use Lean Six Sigma principles to understand your unique PC lifecycle challenges and develop your optimized solution with open lines of communication and full accountability. Lenovo even provides a professional project manager to keep things moving along on schedule.

To make sure your image is the best it can be, Lenovo uses a 150-point testing process at the factory. Once your image passes muster, it’s sent to you for internal testing and approval. Then, your “Gold Image” is sent to manufacturing.

Moving deployment-related activities, like imaging, into manufacturing can help you achieve your goals for customization, quality, predictability and scalability with significant savings. Letting Lenovo provide you with an optimized image will maximize your hardware investment and lower your total cost of ownership.

To learn more, visit: www.lenovo.com/itc