The Gem Group Uses Dell Cloud-Based Services to Save Money

* By Simplifying IT Management, The Gem Group Reduced its IT Budget by 10 Percent
* Dell Helps Reduce the Cost of Managing Corporate Assets and Email
* Through IT Automation, The Gem Group Can Focus on Strategic IT Initiatives

Dell today announced The Gem Group, the promotional product industry’s premier supplier of bags, business accessories and gifts, has reduced its maintenance and support IT budget by 10 percent thanks to automated desktop management and email continuity services from Dell. The Gem Group is one of 5,000 customers using Dell’s cloud-based services to automate labor intensive, manual IT processes for significant cost savings.



The News

* By eliminating manual compliance and security processes The Gem Group has significantly reduced IT expenses by 10 percent. The Gem Group’s IT goal is to ensure its team focuses on high value projects that increase competitiveness rather than time consuming maintenance.
* The Gem Group is using Dell Desktop Manager to track PCs, manage inventory, user history and leases through a single console across all its systems in the U.S. and China. Dell services offer real-time visibility into all PCs and provides remote updates anywhere across the globe for international and mobile workers. The Gem Group is now resolving end-users technical issues more cost effectively and has improved employee productivity.
* With Dell Desktop Manager, The Gem Group’s IT team is saving days of manual checking previously required to keep track of what software is running on its machines in the US and China. Dell Desktop Manager monitors asset policy and procedures to help ensure software license compliance and ensures IT does not purchase excess, unnecessary licenses.
* After a hard drive crash or asset theft, Dell Online Back-up and Recovery solution helps The Gem Group’s IT team quickly and easily send a duplicate, replacement machine.



Continuous Email Access without Hardware to Maintain or Manage

* As a result of using a Dell cloud-based service for email continuity, The Gem Group immediately saved nearly 3 percent of its global IT budget by preventing capital and operational expenses, while helping to ensure sales would not be impacted due to an email outage.
* Like many companies, email is a mission critical application for The Gem Group. If email goes down due to an Internet or data center failure, sales for the company could be impacted for days.
* The Gem Group benefits from the cloud-based Email Management Service (EMS) by ensuring employees have full and continuous access to company email without downtime or data loss, regardless of what happens to the company’s email infrastructure. BlackBerry® wireless devices also continue to send and receive email and all users have full access to email, contacts, and calendar entries.

Quote

“Dell helps our IT team effectively manage assets remotely and ensure email up-time, which frees our staff to complete more strategic projects,” said Ben Messar, Director of IT at The Gem Group. “As a mid-market player in an incredibly competitive space with tight margins, it is critical we run a very efficient organization. Automating desktop and email management allowed us to reduce the cost to manage our environment by 10 percent.”