See how a telecommunications company reduced costs with Bell Micro OEM
Business Brief
This leading Telecommunications Service Provider (TSP) employs over 900 people in offices worldwide including the Americas, Asia, Australia and in Europe, Middle East and Africa. This organization serves over 2000 customers in over 100 countries around the world, with their highly professional global sales and support operations, as well as with their network of over 80 Business Partners.
Key Business Challenges Leading to OEM:
- TSP product requires design, selection and assembly of many technology components—including third-party video and audio cards—sourced from many
third-party vendors - Support and service after the sale are critical—requiring excellent OEM-Ready process and teamwork, available worldwide
- TSP product needed to be built on an efficient server footprint with outstanding reliability
- The nature of the customer-facing TSP business requires ultra-fast responsiveness to custom requests
Solution Highlights
Problem Solved » Bell Micro OEM-Ready programs assisted this TSP with product design, component selection and assembly. The TSP values Bell’s unique ability to offer HP ProLiant servers in combination with third-party video and audio cards along with other third-party components, integrated and assembled for the TSP by Bell Micro without disrupting HP service and support.
Building OEM Better with HP » “Once we have a valid configuration, we can run it through HP’s configurator. That certifies that it’s valid. With a white box configuration,
we would have to build a prototype and then see if it works. Working with HP makes it quicker for us to get to a finished product.”
Business Results » “Working with Bell Micro makes it easier for me to do my job. If I have a supplier or vendor that takes a very conservative 10% of the overhead out of a particular deal, that’s valuable to me. They do the legwork for me.”
Operational Experience » “We had a situation where a customer of ours wanted two custom servers for a demo. These servers were not ready-built. Bell Micro received the call on a Tuesday morning, and delivered to us by the next Monday.”
Why Bell Micro? » Bell Micro is the world’s leading distributor of storage technology, expertise and services. Bell Micro’s OEM-Ready programs offer a better foundation for building OEM solutions offering services that include product design, assembly in one of many ISO 9001:2000 certified locations, shipment, service and support. Bell Micro offers access to HP-branded technology along with white box technology components.
Business Partnership » Bell Micro provides a better business foundation with flexible financing, access to spare parts inventories, and options to assist with go-to-market support of Value-Added Resellers.
The Business Challenge
For the development of a consumer digital TV set-top box, this leading TSP knew that it would need to streamline its operations to offer cost-savings advantages to the consumer. As part of their specialized product, they knew that they would have to combine technology components for many vendors—as many as six—and that they would need outstanding service and support to replace components quickly, anywhere in the world.
“When people sit at home and press that VOD button, they want that movie and they do not want to wait for it,” explains a product manager at the TSP. “If a server goes down and doesn’t fail-over immediately, then we lose money. Time is money in this business.”
Finding the Better OEM Technology
The TSP evaluated HP servers along with two branded competitors. “We selected HP for its global support, productivity capability and efficient footprint, product quality and product availability.”
For this TSP, finding the right HP server specifications is much easier than with a white box selection. Rather than having to build a prototype to make sure all of the components work together, with HP they were able to pull the product specifications and run the configuration through HP’s online Configurator tool. The specification provided all of the options in one place: parts, service, support, and add-ons. The TSP estimates that they saved 30 – 50% of the time usually required just to get a valid server configuration, by working with HP.
Working with Better OEM-Ready Programs
Bell Micro OEM-Ready programs are a critical part of making HP servers available to this TSP. Bell Micro OEM-Ready design services assist in combining HP servers with third-party components. Bell Micro OEM-Ready manufacturing services make it simple and easy for this TSP to receive custom server configurations already built. Also, Bell Micro’s close relationship with HP enables third-party parts integration without disrupting the HP support and service agreements.
“Devoting a day to solutions review and discussing configuration options is not unusual,” reports a product manager at this TSP. “This saves us time and resource, which can be redirected elsewhere. It’s not unusual for us to save three or four days of people time in the design process.”
Business Results
The TSP is able to offer a unique and compelling digital TV service, built better using HP ProLiant servers combined working with Bell Micro OEM-Ready design and manufacturing services. Bell Micro’s capability to respond quickly to requests for custom server builds means that this TSP never misses a customer opportunity.
Bell Micro OEM-Ready inventory management helps to further reduce the overhead to this TSP’s business. “We’d at least be spending 2 – 3% additional to do the work ourselves, to make sure that components are available when we need them,” states the TSP. “Working with Bell Micro also saves us on the costs associated with the warehouse, the audits, the insurance, the integration, the support, the shipping, the management of it all.”
In summary, this TSP reports that “HP and Bell Micro are the clear choice for our business.”
