GSA adds Micron to growing list of agency leasing agreements
The leasing gold rush has a new miner. Micron Electronics Inc.'s government subsidiary has received General Services Administration approval for leasing PCs, servers and notebook computers on its Information Technology Schedule.
By Chris Driscoll
GCN Staff
The leasing gold rush has a new miner. Micron Electronics Inc.'s government subsidiary has received General Services Administration approval for leasing PCs, servers and notebook computers on its Information Technology Schedule.
The government's main PC leasing vehicles are the Outsourcing the Desktop Initiative for NASA and GSA's Seat Management Program, but a few agency pilots have also tested the concept to cut costs of acquiring and managing client PCs.
An ODIN pilot at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., has reported per-seat, per-year prices significantly lower for leasing with seat management features than for direct ownership. Goddard's costs came in at $2,300 to $3,400 per seat [GCN, Jan. 25, Page 12].
Up in arms
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms' lease agreement with Unisys Corp. has achieved a per-seat, per-year price of about $3,300, not counting WAN connectivity costs, chief information officer Patrick Schambach said at a recent GCN Forum.
By way of comparison, GartnerGroup Inc. of Stamford, Conn., has estimated annual PC expenses at about $8,000 per seat. A study of GSA's 400-seat Federal Technology Service put the per-seat cost there at $8,200.
'I know that other agencies are looking over the edge' at leasing, said Ron Clevenger, a sales executive at Micron Government Computer Systems Inc., a subsidiary of the Nampa, Idaho, hardware vendor.
Interest in leasing has developed slowly, as studies and pilot results trickle out.
Other leading PC vendors with federal leasing programs include Gateway Inc., Dell Computer Corp. and Wang Federal Systems of McLean, Va.
Clevenger said he regards the precise costs quoted by ATF and NASA as big motivators for other agencies to outsource their PC ownership and management. The GartnerGroup figure was inflated compared with the government figures, Clevenger said.
He said the IRS and the Justice Department are interested in setting up leasing programs, and he expects the IRS to establish agreements outside the GSA program.
Contact Micron at 208-893-3231.
What Micron charges for leasing
Micron Government Computer Systems Inc.'s minimum leasing amount is $50,000. The program has lease-to-own and fair-market-value plans when a lease ends.
Desktop and notebook computers come with one-year subscriptions to Micron University training courses. Micron offers trade-in programs and services as well.
Here are sample leasing costs for specific hardware:
- $76 per month for a 550-MHz ClientPro CS Pentium III desktop system with 512K Level 2 cache, Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 and management software
- $86 per month for a 366-MHz TransPort Trek2 Pentium II notebook or desktop replacement unit with either Windows 98 or Windows NT Workstation 4.0
- $321 per month for a dual 500-MHz Pentium III Xeon NetFrame 6200 server with 512K Level 2 cache, NT Server 4.0 and tools for server management.
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