Dare County School District

Secteur public, Santé et Education


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	HP Metered Capacity makes the grade at Dare County School District

	"HP Metered Capacity has proven to be a real success in lowering our district's print environment support costs while increasing output reliability. It has completely removed the risk of teachers not having the materials they need to conduct classes or students being unable to produce work ." --Carl Woody Network Engineer, Dare Country School District

"When Carl Woody came to North Carolina's Dare County School District as its network engineer in 2001, the district was struggling with an unstable print environment that was costing $34,000 annually.

Located in northeastern Carolina, along the Atlantic seaboard, this school district has nine schools - four elementary (grades K-5), two middle (6-8), one secondary (6-12); one high school (9-12) and one alternative school (8-12).

Around 4,500 students, staff and faculty all relied on the print environment, which comprised HP Inkjet 1200s for color, and "throw away" - less than 200 US dollars -inkjet printers and HP Laser printers for black and white. Although the district had a third-party Intel -based print server to facilitate network printing, it was unreliable. "Our cost of printing was unnecessarily elevated because of a high equipment failure rate most of the printers being used had been intended for less demanding, home use and were not designed to be networked," recalled Woody. "We wanted to stabilize our network printing environment, so we evaluated bringing in new printers and print servers. We also wanted a support contract to cover the maintenance and proactive care of the entire print environment, so that if problems arose they would be resolved quickly and we wouldn't be burdened with additional costs."

Course of study

The school district already utilized a Novell network. Woody noted, "In our evaluation of different vendor's printers, we particularly liked the compatibility of the HP print servers with Novell, they worked flawlessly. In addition, the quality of printing and the speed we experienced with HP's printers were excellent."

With the flexibility and performance provided by the new HP printers, Dare County School District actually reduced the total number of printers in its environment by one-third. "Typically, schools that had ten printers were able to deploy about six new networked printers," Woody commented. Dare County School District purchased 22 new HP printers to bring the total number of HP printers to 51. It selected the HP Business Inkjet 2600 for schools that had a color requirement, the HP LaserJet 2250N for mid-range volume needs and the HP LaserJet 4100 to meet the schools' with high-volume print locations. It also purchased HP Color LaserJets 4550 and 4600 for all of its computer laboratories.

The benefit of HP Metered Capacity
Dare County School District also contracted with HP for the supply of LaserJet print cartridges and on-going printer maintenance for its entire print environment under a four-year, level pay HP Metered Capacity agreement.

"With our HP Metered Capacity contract we have agreed to a monthly print volume and, provided we are within this number of printouts, the support costs for the entire print environment are capped. Even if a printer needs maintenance, HP repairs it for no additional charge. With this agreement our annual print environment support costs have dropped to $21,000 - that's 40 percent less than before," noted Woody.

Woody admitted that so far, during its first year of the contract, the district only has had to call for one repair under its HP Metered Capacity contract - which was resolved quickly - because its HP printers are very reliable.

However, he commented, "The technical facilitators from each school have all commented that the support contract with HP is ideal, because they don't have worry about ordering toner or getting a printer fixed."

He concluded, "HP Metered Capacity has proven to be a real success in lowering our district's print environment support costs while increasing output reliability. It has completely removed the risk of teachers not having the materials they need to conduct classes or students being unable to produce work."

Challenges

Increase printout reliability
Stabilize and provide balanced deployment of the print environment
Reduce annual print environment support costs

Solution

Implemented a 4-year level pay HP Metered Capacity contract for support and maintenance of complete print environment
Deployed 22 new printers, bringing the total to 51 in production:
- HP LaserJet 4100 printers for high volume locations
- HP LaserJet 2250N printers for mid-range volume needs
- HP Business InkJet 2600 printers for color
- HP Color LaserJet 4550 and 4600 in computer laboratory locations

Results

Dramatically increased output reliability
Reduced number of overall printers by 30%
Reduced district's annual print environment support budget by 40%
Streamlined the administrative time and costs around ordering supplies - supplies are shipped automatically based on usage.
Improved end-user productivity by optimizing on HP printer hardware and support

At a glance

Name: Dare County School District
Location: Northeastern North Carolina, along the Atlantic seaboard
Number of Schools: Nine schools - 4 elementary (grades K-5); 2 middle (6-8); 1 secondary (6-12); 1 high school (9-12); 1 alternative school (8-12)
Total students: 4767
Total employees: 669
Telephone: (252) 473-1151
URL:www.dare.k12.nc.us

For more information on how working with HP can benefit you, contact your local HP service representative, or visit us through the Internet at our world wide web address: http://www.hp.com

2003 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. Technical information in this document is subject to change without notice. Microsoft and Windows are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other product names mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.