The Challenge

This fast moving school, which added over 700 students in last five years, refreshes its entire device fleet every second year. Lindisfarne’s ConnectEd program includes a 1:1 strategy for its 1630 students – iPads for K-6 and MacBooks for 7-12. The 200 staff use a mix of the two.

“We have an absolute commitment to the two year cycle and for every one of our students and staff to start the refresh school year with new equipment. No one is to miss out – even last minute enrolments. Each device is 100% pre-configured for the apps and files of its nominated user’s needs – and thoroughly tested. When it’s handed over, all they have to do is open the lid and start to work,” says Gavin Kennedy, Director of Information Services at Lindisfarne.

Shortly after placing an order for the secondary campus’ MacBooks in November, Gavin started hearing rave reviews about the newly launched MacBook Airs that boasted the new M1 chip. The energy-efficient M1 allows power-use optimisations not possible with previous architecture. Apple claims the energy-efficient cores use one tenth the power. He changed his order to the M1 Mac’s only to be confronted with a stock availability issue.

Gavin also knew he had a very short window before the lease expiry of the school’s existing fleet. While dealing with the deployment of the new devices, his team would have to prepare the old equipment for return to Apple Financial Services (AFS). “To get the maximum residual buy back price, every item had to be in mint condition,” he says.

The Solution

Lindisfarne turned to Compnow to “work their magic in the background to get all the devices we needed before Day 1 of the school year,” Gavin says.

Having not worked with Compnow prior to this order, Gavin was impressed by its comprehensive proposal, with a detailed pre- and post- sale service model. Compnow’s support regime over the two year cycle was especially pertinent given Lindisfarne’s regional location. And its long developed expertise in the education sphere gave him the confidence to proceed.

Compnow and its considerable connections into Apple worked “to get the guarantee we’d have all devices delivered in January. They brought it to fruition, pulling orders from their strong relationships with different distributors across Australia. Compnow was able to source our 1000 M1 devices, before everybody else, to fulfil our 1900 device total order,” Gavin says.

From experience, Gavin knows that spreading the rollout across each year – rather than a two year big bang deployment – doesn’t reduce the workload. It’s automation that makes the difference. He has proven the value of condensing the task of fleet refreshes into a small, concentrated timeframe. The school was able to turbo charge the managed deployment without additional cost or effort due to its core infrastructure platform of VMWare and JAMF Pro. The small IT team had the super fast throughput capacity to set up 200 devices a day. As students and teachers came to the library on launch day it “took 30 seconds to collect their devices. Each one comes out of a labelled bag completely personally configured. The individual signs a digital form and is gone,” he says.

Other considerations Gavin noted are that, because of Apple residual values, it is more economical to rotate every two years – at a third higher than three year old machines. Importantly too is that, by changing the entire fleet, equity and reliability issues between old and new devices are removed.

In tandem with the incoming delivery was the equally time critical completion of the end of lease return of the old fleet. This was a complex technical and logistics project.

Compnow had just two weeks to supply special protective crates to collect 600 devices and forward them to their teams of technicians in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. The end of life processes saw each device checked, repaired, cleaned and serial numbers matched to leases before being sent on to AFS operations.

The school’s ongoing fixed price service agreement with Compnow provides time and cost efficient support. “When you assess fleet costs, you’ve really got to look past the upfront price of the devices. Lifecycle is where the true dollars are calculated, with the total package of insurance, repairs and residual value. You can be tempted to take an offer that drops $5 off each device – and that’s significant in a large order – but the extension of your team service is what’s essential. “That’s the difference between buying from so called ‘box movers’, or a complete integrator like Compnow,” he says.

Compnow’s financing offerings are a further benefit to Lindisfarne. “They work tightly with AFS and give us options to lease or buy. They’re flexible in amortising payments over 24 months of the program.”

The Benefits

“Working with Compnow is all good feedback,” Gavin says.

“It comes down to the people and they’re really good. Compnow is very much a team and a very important part of our team. We draw on Compnow’s national strengths and transparent way of dealing.

“The hours you have to put into a normal rollout is huge. This one was over and above. If something had to be achieved Compnow threw everything at it. They did a ton of the detailed, pressure work and took the load off.”

Lindisfarne is committed to the “provisioning of high quality technology to our school community, inside the fee structure. At only $400 per student per year, it’s far cheaper than a BYOD policy where parents are responsible for purchasing and even insurance and repairs. The other upside is that staff can 100% bank on knowing what students will come to class with.

“Compnow now sits behind the guarantees of this provisioning. They have given us the confidence to step away so we can focus on making everything happen inside our school. That’s so valuable,” Gavin says.