A robust companion for everyday school life

The Office of Digital Affairs and Data Processing of the City of Heidelberg in Germany is the central contact and coordinator for all digitization questions and projects, whether for city administration or relating to citizens, the economy, or science. It sponsors, promotes, directs, and implements digitization projects both in their entirety and on the departmental level.

The Office of Digital Affairs and Data Processing designs and directs the digital development of Heidelberg’s city administration and urban society. This also includes the IT equipment in all the schools in the fifth-largest city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany – in collaboration with the local system provider Koinegg IT. “In close partnership with the Office of Digital Affairs, we’ve been providing digital equipment and support for school IT in Heidelberg for over ten years,” says Christian Koinegg, owner of Koinegg IT.

Choosing devices isn’t just a matter of a good price/performance ratio. The partners also place a high premium on product quality and reliability. The goal is a stable IT infrastructure that teachers and students can fully trust and enjoy. Schools need professional devices that operate for years without problems.

After soliciting bids for new devices, a choice was made in favor of the compact FUJITSU Desktop ESPRIMO G558 Mini PC with its flexible mounting options and the ergonomic FUJITSU Display P24. “We were won over as much by the high quality and long service life of Fujitsu products as by the Fujitsu servers, which we’ve already been using in the school environment for many years,” says Andre Arnold, head of school IT at the Office of Digital Affairs.

The fact of minimal product downtimes is especially important for the Office of Digital Affairs and the end users. It helps boost users’ confidence in the technology and reduces costs. Taking into account failure rates and expenditure for personnel, the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the Fujitsu solution in Heidelberg over a five-year period is about 60 percent lower than it would be for comparable systems. If a failure should occur, the monitors and mini PCs can be replaced independently of one another.

However, performance and cost optimization are just one side of the coin. The partners were as much concerned about how the products were produced as they were about product quality. Once again, Fujitsu won them over with products manufactured under equitable conditions with ecofriendly packaging. “Because the products are small and generally packed in paper, disposal and recycling effort is low,” says Koinegg. “We currently save about ten minutes per device.” The new devices also consume less power and, thanks to their compact design, take up less space, leaving more room on the students’ desks.

Around 700 school workstations have already been equipped with Fujitsu systems, and the feedback from both teachers and students has been overwhelmingly positive. “And we’re just as pleased as the end users in the schools,” says Arnold. “Device operation is extremely stable. There have been no warranty claims or complaints, but if there ever are, we can count on Fujitsu’s fast and uncomplicated support. From the very start, our dealings have been everything we could have hoped for: friendly, goal-oriented, and personal.”