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Home to about 1.4 million residents, Tarrant County is the third-largest county in Texas and one of the fastest growing urban counties in the United States. Its Information Technology Department is responsible for acquiring, installing, maintaining, programming and operating the county's data processing and data communications systems, including approximately 5,000 desktop computers.

For the past two-and-a-half years, Tarrant County has turned to Gateway for its desktop systems, along with tablet and notebook computers for its mobile applications. Each year, the county replaces 25 percent of its desktop computers with new ones. Currently, half of its desktop machines are Gateway computers.

Gateway is an excellent technology partner, said Steve Smith, CIO of Tarrant County in Fort Worth. "We find them very engaged and interested in our business," he said. Gateway makes it easy for Smith and his team to gain access to the representatives best equipped to address the county's concerns, whether they are high-level technical support staff or top corporate executives.

"I'm able to speak directly with their chief financial officer and their senior vice president of sales, and even the president," Smith said. "They seem very interested in what we are doing and tell us we are very much a target customer for them."

Swift Service
Along with high-performing, reliable hardware, Gateway provides Tarrant County with services that save the IT Department time and money, and help keep end-users productive.

When it comes time to replace a desktop machine, Gateway copies the applications, data and configuration settings from the user's old hard drive onto the new one. "They pre-image our machines for us, so our machines come set up and ready to go out of the box," Smith said. The county receives the machines at a central distribution point, then transfers them to the locations that need them. "Then we tag them for our asset management and plug them in. It's very fast," he said. Employees who receive new machines can start working on them without delay.

If the county has problems with a Gateway computer under warranty, IT Department technicians are certified to diagnose and solve the problems themselves. They order replacement parts through a Gateway Web site, without having to contact low-level support staff. For more complex situations, they order parts by phone. When the parts arrive, technicians make repairs themselves, and Gateway pays the department for their work.

For Tarrant County, this is a better solution than sending a service contractor to work on the Gateway machines. "We prefer to do it this way, since our employees are responsible for maintaining custodial ownership of our data," Smith said. "We can't let it out of county hands, because it's potentially sensitive information." The self-maintenance agreement also helps offset the department's maintenance costs. "It generates a return on investment that we hadn't really counted on," he said.

If IT staff members need help with a problem, Gateway offers live technical support through an online facility, available on the company's Web site 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Gateway also provides support by phone through its service account management program. Gateway matched Tarrant County with a senior technician who is familiar with the county's IT setup and understands its special needs. Calls from county IT staff go directly to this representative. Instead of explaining the county's situation to a new person each time, technicians can focus immediately on the problem at hand.

"As a customer, we get treated as a service partner," Smith said. "We're not just sold to and then left behind in the dust."

Tarrant County's previous technology vendors often took a day or two to resolve hardware problems. Now, employees can get back to work on their machines much faster, "sometimes almost within 15 or 20 minutes if it's a simple problem," Smith said.