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Found in: Case Studies

Tacoma, Wash., works hard to offer the best service it can to City residents. Much of that service delivery falls on the shoulders of Tacoma Public Utilities (TPU), one of the nation's largest and oldest public utility companies. Publicly owned since 1893, TPU boasts nearly 1,200 employees, and all operations are funded by sales of service, not taxes. Besides traditional utilities, TPU manages an extremely diverse array of resources -- everything from hydroelectric dams and fisheries to parks and railroads.

Recently, TPU added another service to its expansive repertoire, a cable television and data network known as the Click! Network. With so many services being offered, the City needed a robust and flexible IT infrastructure. Tacoma recently completed a massive implementation of ERP software from SAP, and a crucial part of that upgrade included standardizing on reliable Gateway PCs and notebooks.

Meeting Multiple Needs
Rick Clark is a Senior Technical Analyst in Business Information Systems, which serves the City of Tacoma, Tacoma Public Utilities, and Click! Network. He said the City chose Gateway because of the company's reputation for quality products, great service and affordability.

"Not too many companies can say they manage parks, fisheries, dams, an airport, an event dome, convention center, arts theater, senior service centers, a steam plant, a railroad, bill paying stations, firefighters, police, courts, numerous mobile users; and also bill for water, power, refuse, storm drainage, sewer, rail, cable TV and high-speed data services; and more," he said. "I think Tacoma is a very unique business in that respect -- and the stability, availability and performance of the IT infrastructure necessary for all of these various lines of business to work are testament to our success with implementing Gateway products."

TPU started partnering with Gateway in 2002 when the City began upgrading its IT infrastructure in anticipation of the SAP deployment. At that time, Tacoma needed Gateway's top-of-the-line PC as soon as it was available. Gateway came to task and delivered by providing Tacoma with the very first E-6000 computers straight from the assembly line. Since then, Gateway has been the standard for the City of Tacoma, Tacoma Public Utilities and Click! Network.

"It's interesting, we have a distributed IT environment and departments are responsible for procuring and managing their own PC assets and line of business applications," said Clark. "We have no method of enforcing standards; however, we have had great success with the Gateway platform. I believe our customers in the departments can see the value of standardizing on one good familiar platform and thus we have a strong de facto standard of Gateway desktops and notebooks."

Of course, other vendors have tried to sway Tacoma from Gateway, but none have matched the combination of products, service and support that Gateway offers, let alone cost.

"Based on our success and total cost of ownership returns, we have no reason to attempt to purchase lower-end or consumer-based models," said Clark. "The E-6000s we purchased in 2002 are still in service and some of those have received a memory upgrade to 1 GB but otherwise, they are current business workstations that we expect to see another two to three years out of. Since then, we have continued to promote a de facto standard that has continued through the E-6100, E-6300 and now the E-6500 desktop models."

To facilitate Tacoma's SAP implementation, Gateway imaged the City's initial batch of 500 E-6000s with anti-virus software, Microsoft Office Professional and the latest operating system updates. In addition, Tacoma uses Microsoft Systems Management Server to distribute software upgrades to its Gateway PCs remotely. Gateway� E-Series desktops feature Intel� Pentium� 4 processors with HT Technology1 for maximum performance and adaptability.