By Lilia Guan
Hardware vendor Dell, recently held a webinar for local government to educate councils about its systems management product KACE.
Dell KACE provides systems management appliances for managing desktops, laptops and servers.
The product is an appliance-based architecture and delivers a pre-integrated bundle of application software via a dedicated server appliance, which can be plugged into an existing network.
Dell KACE’s sales manager of Australia and New Zealand, Jon McBride, told Government News the product would suit local government organisations that are unable to afford systems management suits requiring dedicated staff.
“We recently held a number of webinars to educate councils to about the service,” he said.
“In the United States we have a number of government clients including the City of Reno, City of Sacramento and police departments all the way up to NASA.”
South Brisbane-based Christian Brothers school, St Laurence's College, installed the KACE system in December last year.
The school’s IT operations manager, Anthony Kennedy, said the school had 1500 boys in Years 5 to 12. It had 200 staff, including five IT employees and about 1000 devices.
“Of those devices we have about 200 notebooks, 200 Apple Macs and the rest Dell PCs,” he said.
“Some of these products were bought through the Federal Government’s education revolution initiative.”
Mr Kennedy said the school had a limited IT budget and had to be “smart” and do “more with less”.
“There are high-end systems management products out there, which require one dedicated IT staff, look after the system,” he said.
“Previous to KACE we ran an Altiris product, with no dedicated expert, to run an Excel spreadsheet looking after our 1000 devices.”
Mr Kennedy said the increase in government funding for new devices meant an Excel spreadsheet was no longer an efficient way of looking at where and how the school’s products were being used.
“Dell’s KACE has helped us replace our old help desk and systems management solution,” he said.
“For us the product has been easy to use and required no additional training.”
Originally founded in 2003, KACE was acquired by Dell in February 2010.
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