Dell going to West Point

U.S. Military Academy

The U.S. Military Academy at West Point this week announced that it has purchased more than $3 million in Dell Computer Corp. technology for two programs this academic year.

The first project is a digitization effort that will capture portions of the cadet library, including yearbooks, Civil War maps, the cadet records of famous graduates, the personal correspondence of significant historical figures. The project will use Dell PowerEdge servers and a Dell/EMC storage-area network (SAN), said Maj. Bill Turmel, chief of the user support branch at West Point.

The SAN is valued at $240,000, said Sean Berg, Dell's account executive for West Point.

The other award covers issuing a Dell Latitude C840 notebook to all 1,200 plebes, or freshmen, this fall, Turmel said. He added that the academy is "developing technically savvy leaders who will guide the Army and the nation in the Information Age...[and] Dell's technology met our requirements for performance, reliability and price."

The notebooks, which were purchased through a Army Small Computer Program contract, were distributed in one day, beginning with the computers being issued off the back of trucks into the hands of the cadets. The following morning, all cadets were registered to the domain and logged on to the network.

Col. Don Welsh, associate dean for information and educational technology at West Point, said that Dell worked closely with the academy to meet the "strict shipping and configuration requirements" needed for a one-day network deployment.

Both contracts were awarded in June, and the 1,200 notebooks cost $2,400 each, for a total of $2.88 million, Berg said.