Dell gets a million to sort out FT's desktops

Dell has won a £1m plus contract to sort out the Financial Times' desktops in a leasing, management and support deal.

The FT will be taking OptiPlex desktops, Latitude notebooks and flat screen monitors to replace its wide variety of legacy systems.

Ian Cohen, IT director at the FT, said: "We wanted to standardise our systems and have them built to a common FT software specification or image that could be delivered to any user across the globe."

He added that Dell would also deal with the inventory and asset management of the hardware and software and provide support over the transition period. The relatively fixed contract would also allow the FT to budget properly.

Cohen said: "Taking something that was previously thought of as simply a capital expense and turning it into a flexible service provides a simple way of creating value and improving productivity. It is the way forward for IT."

The FT has already completed the first phase of the installation, rolling out 500 new systems over a period of seven weeks. The paper's journalists are now using the kit to write stories and also to file them remotely.

Dell reports that this has already relieved the strain on the help desk and has cut the number of virus incidents at the paper known as the pink'un.

In the next phase, Dell will roll the systems out to the FT's global empire in a process to be finished this year. It is providing what it calls ' a complete asset lifecycle management from cradle to grave.'