What You Need To Know

As I mentioned in my post earlier this week, we are beginning our data migration to our new site. That means we are temporarily disabling comments to all of the Dell English blogs (except for Your Blog, ReGeneration.org and DigitalNomads.com) until we can launch the new site on November 7.

Soon after the migration begins, we will create a board called Community Upgrade.  I will update this post with that link when the board is live.

Just a few minutes ago, I published a blog post on Direct2Dell explaining some changes that will be occurring later this week.

To centralize the comments on this topic, I have disabled comments on this post. Please go to my Direct2Dell post to share your questions or concerns.

One of the key attributes of the new Optiplex line is its energy efficiency. For example, when compared to older systems in a customers’ environment – say the Optiplex 170L from about 4 years ago – the energy savings can be up to 84 percent (actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability). In fact, we just did a green makeover with Robertson Homes, a green-builder based outside of Orlando, Florida, where we replaced aging Opti 170Ls and non-branded systems with eight Optiplex 960s, a PowerEdge 400SC server with a PowerEdge T300, and provided eight new 19-inch EPEAT gold-certified flat panel monitors.

To view details on the makeover and hear firsthand from Robertson Homes co-owner and IT manager Clint Robertson on the value of green to his customers and his business, check out the “green makeover” video. We’ll be going back to visit Clint and his team in three months to see the REAL savings based on how companies actually use our technology on a daily basis vs. relying solely on our own engineering tests! We’ll update you on those results here and on our small business blog. A few things we do know from our energy calculations:

• The Optiplex 960 enables up to 84 percent less power consumption over Robertson Homes older OptiPlex 170L desktops and up to 43 percent less power consumption over the previous generation of OptiPlex desktops to reduce energy costs (actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability);
• The new PowerEdge T300 server is 23 percent more efficient than their previous 400SC server; and
• Three CRT monitors were removed and replaced with EPEAT Gold-certified 19-inch widescreen monitors for an approximate 50-percent reduction in average power consumption per monitor.

Added up, these savings directly impact the bottom line! If you are in the market for new desktops and want to ensure you are getting the most energy-efficient Dell configuration possible to experience similar savings, consider these components and settings:

• Energy Star 4.0 Category B or C, EPEAT Gold, Dell ESMART Settings (additional $20)
• Intel Core 2 Duo Processors
• 88% efficient power supply
• Quiet Kit (50% less noise; additional $50)
• Integrated Graphics or DVI-add in card ($10)
• 2.5” hard drives (more energy efficient than 3.5” drives) ($16 more for 80GB 2.5” hard drive vs. 80GB 3.5” hard drive)

On average, this will add around $100 to the upfront cost per desktop, but with the energy savings expected over the life of the system, the benefits more than outweigh the cost.

For more Optiplex news, visit www.dell.com/seriousbusiness.  Here you can learn more about the productivity, manageability and serviceability gains and security features of the new systems – all the more reason to give the new Optiplex a serious look. And stay tuned for a follow-up post and video tomorrow featuring Leigh Stringer, aka Greenette, editor of The Green Workplace blog and author of the upcoming book, "The Green Workplace." Leigh will be sharing additional tips for “greening” your business to save even more in energy costs.

At Dell, we talk a lot about how to simplify IT. But the most powerful voices come from customers. Merlin Glynn, CTO of MedNetwoRx in Dallas, Texas, was kind enough to write this email and allow us to publish it here. Thank you for writing Merlin.

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I am the CTO of a small to medium-sized ASP where our annual budgets are very tight.  Perhaps in our IT market place more than any other, we attempt to stretch our buying potential to its utmost.  We have recently undertaken a 12 month DataCenter refresh project where we have upgraded/implemented over 160 physical and virtual servers along with associated DELL-EMC storage, OpenManage IT systems management, and other DataCenter Infrastructure objects.  I wanted to take this time to commend the Dell Enterprise Technology Center for the documentation, case studies, and technical sales material they produce.  In particular Scott Hanson’s many projects related to PowerEdge Servers and VMware have been of extreme benefit to us in choosing DELL as our preferred hardware vendor.  Documents such as Competitive Power Savings with VMware Consolidation on the Dell PowerEdge 2950 gave us template data to plan power consumption and capacity analysis of the large virtualization component of our data center refresh.  In the past 12 months we have consolidated 100+ various x86 platform servers onto 26 Dell Poweredge 2950s.  Recent studies with VMware DRS and VMotion capabilities on Dell servers, provided by Mr. Hanson and the Dell Enterprise Technology Center, have also greatly assisted us in planning for our current VMware Disaster Recovery implementation.  The output of this group is the main reason we continue to deploy DELL servers in our environment today.  We know we can trust the real world data provided in these projects to make decisions that will maximize our deployment dollar.

Mednetworx focuses on providing (EHR) Electronic Health Records and (PM) Practice Management software to our customer base via a secure ASP application presentation scenario.  In addition to our DataCenter Refresh project, our company has also gone from acquisition to production with an implementation of an Allscripts TouchWorks PM and EHR solution for the New Mexico Department of Health.  New Mexico has 33 counties and the state's total area is 121,665 square miles.  At a population density of 15 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth most sparsely inhabited U.S. State.  THIS IMPLEMENTATION EFFORT SPANNED 55 LOCATIONS IN ONLY 12 MONTHS, and was implemented on DELL Poweredge 2950 servers, DELL-EMC CX storage along with Cisco, Citrix, and VMware products.  We could not have performed this implementation without the rapid purchase cycle of DELL distribution and ‘up-front’ knowledge of the server capabilities in our planned environment, which we gleaned from material produced by the Dell Enterprise Technology Center.  So from one of your ‘smaller’ customers, I say thanks for the job these guys and DELL as a whole have done for our SMB business model.