Author: Melissa
Why these Computers are Preferred by Professionals and the Features Separating this Device from Others on the Market?
Premium Business Laptops – Sleek Design and Industry-Leading Performance by HP
At Metropolitan Computers and Supplies, we specialise in providing HP laptops, including the beloved HP EliteBook series. The HP EliteBook range are premium business laptops that are designed to provide the best performance and security for working professionals and casual users. Aesthetically, it benefits from a sleek style, which pairs perfectly with its cutting-edge functionality. This HP laptop is also equipped with advanced features, making it one of the most reliable workspace computers on the market.
HP EliteBook Features & User Benefits
We account for a range of customers and their various business needs through our range of HP EliteBooks. Our options vary between price points, which reflect the additional features, processing power and screen sizes available. Below are just a few of our favourite shared capabilities within the HP EliteBook range.
Firstly, users of the newer computers should expect to stand out on their online calls thanks to the computers’ acclaimed 5-megapixel sensors, which support up to 1080p video.
Another key attribute in this range of HP laptops is the powerful processor. They’re equipped with the latest Intel Core processors, which provide lightning-fast speeds and the assurance that users can work on multiple tasks simultaneously.
These computers also boast a high-quality display. The HP EliteBook 840, for example, has an incredible 14-inch full HD display that is perfect for professionals who develop graphics, edit videos, or for anyone who appreciates seeing all of the detail captured in a stunning way.
Additional advantages of this range of computers include their impressive high-capacity battery. On a single charge, these laptops can reach up to 12 hours of usage, ideal for those needing to use a computer on the move and throughout the entire day.
Australia’s Preferred Supplier of HP EliteBooks: Metropolitan Computers and Supplies
We’ve been a trusted business in Sydney since 1997 and a proud, loyal partner to HP Inc. for over 25 years. We’re certified HP experts, and recently were the recipients of HP PC Specialist Partner of the Year 2021 and HP Partner of the Year 2020.
Ready to take your business to the next level and get your hands on a new line of HP computers? Why wait? Get in touch, and one of our professional team members will be happy to assist you.
A Path to Consumption
As businesses around the world continue to shift to a consumption IT model, what does that mean for you? In this article, we explore the “why” behind this shift and how your business can reap the rewards of pay-as-you-go IT infrastructure with insights from Bardia Khalilifar, Region Leader at HPE GreenLake, shared at our 2021 HPE and Metropolitan Computers & Supplies Customer Webinar.
The Next Wave of Digital Transformation
In the current climate, more and more businesses are pursuing digital transformation fuelled by applications and data everywhere. And in many cases, hybrid cloud has happened by accident. When public cloud was deployed, a lot of businesses wanted to host some of their other important applications and data within the public cloud but also maintain some of their important applications and data in their own private environment.
This shift from a net revenue perspective is also reflected in the numbers. For example, in Q4 of 2010, the technology industry’s net revenue equalled $202 billion with services making up 36% and product making up 64%. Fast forward to Q4 of 2020 and you’ve got a net revenue of $214 billion made up of 63% services and 37% product—so you can see it’s flipped. There’s now more demand within the cloud-first response but also in as-a-service because the market is transitioning. The hardware enterprise network solution is reducing more and more due to costs and management associated with this model.
Businesses of all sizes and across every industry are now operating in the hybrid edge-to-cloud world and a large majority of businesses have a cloud-first mentality. This idea of cloud-first is really hybrid cloud-first. In fact, over 95% of organisations have both public and private cloud environments.
So, let’s talk about the value of moving from a more enterprise-grade, hardware only solution, or public cloud option, to a more hybrid model. With a hybrid cloud-first approach, a business can tackle four of the biggest challenges of our time—agility, scalability, cost-effectiveness, and complexity. To solve these issues, solutions like HPE GreenLake transition customers into a consumption space where they only pay for what they use and can adapt rapidly by adding or removing storage or compute capacity as needs change. It also allows businesses to host their apps and data anywhere.
What is HPE GreenLake?
To give you a bit of an introduction to what HPE GreenLake is, it’s an edge-to-cloud platform that allows applications and data to be co-located at any location, in any data centre. Some of the biggest benefits businesses gain from this consumption-based model is self-service, pay-per-use, the ability to scale up or down, and a completely managed platform.
The GreenLake ecosystem features the latest technology including enterprise-grade AI/ML and analytics, powerful Intel® processors, and modern security measures. To tie everything together, it has a single-pane dashboard where your business can manage your own workloads, consumption, and capacity, while also being able to identify how it stacks up against the cost model every month. The
Pay-per-use means that if your business tends to scale up or down, you will only pay for what you truly consume as opposed to the assets itself. A lot of businesses don’t operate in a static environment—all business experience downtimes and uptimes depending on fluctuating demands. HPE want to support and fuel this by giving businesses the ability to easily scale capacity up or down, providing a more cost-effective way of operating. On top of this, HPE partner with IT companies such as Metropolitan Computers & Supplies to provide the management aspect so that businesses can free up resources within their own IT teams.
The Benefits of a Consumption Model
When you’re looking at the benefits of a consumption-based model like GreenLake, there are four key advantages.
- 80% shorter time to deploy digital projects: GreenLake gives time back to businesses so they can focus on what’s appropriate for themselves as opposed to just keeping the lights on.
- 85% reduction in risk: Less unplanned downtime due to the additional capacity that can be deployed within a day or two as opposed to months.
- 45% reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO): Lower costs associated with purchasing hardware outright, adding capacity over the years, and investing in resources to manage the platform.
- 40% increase in IT team productivity: Using GreenLake managed services boosts IT team productivity while providing better control and insights.
How Does HPE GreenLake Managed by Metropolitan Computers & Supplies Work?
If we take a 5-year term as an example. Your business might experience times of growth or it could go the other way at times. When you compare GreenLake to a standard Capex offering, the latter has a huge overhead cost from day one. With the GreenLake consumption model, Metropolitan Computers & Supplies provides a minimum commitment level at the beginning so that you don’t pay for anything you don’t need.
Metropolitan Computers & Supplies do an assessment and scope your environment to determine what you actually need. We then give you what you need right now as well as, say, 20% variable usage capacity that you can dip into when you need to add a new site or location. You can simply add what you need without experiencing downtime.
GreenLake also has a buffer zone so that when there’s a spike happening within your environment, you can use that buffer zone to dial your capacity up when required. The great part is that you don’t have to pay for that buffer zone when you don’t require the capacity. You can also simply dial it back once you no longer need it.
As part of GreenLake’s offerings, HPE assigns Account Support Management to sit with Metropolitan Computers & Supplies and our clients to assess the environment and advise how much capacity is utilised each month, helping you optimise your usage. In addition to this, if you need more capacity deployed, it can be done in 72 hours instead of 3 months. By taking this approach our team and HPE help your business minimise overhead costs.
What are the Billing Options?
One of the key benefits of consumption IT is flexibility, so we allow businesses to choose the term agreement that works for them—this could be three, four, or five years. The payment is then measured on a monthly basis.
How Does Consumption IT Impact My Teams?
GreenLake doesn’t just benefit your IT teams, it’s great for plenty of other key areas in your business. Below are some of the ways it can make life easier for other teams.
- Developers: Can speed up development and release code faster.
- Finance: Have a clear dashboard to see what is being spent and where.
- Legal and compliance: Security and compliance features of GreenLake prevent business risk.
- IT: Know when more or less capacity is required.
- Data scientists: Gain insights to take their ML pilots to production.
- Chief Information Officer: Doesn’t need to manage IT infrastructure services and can instead focus on other important projects.
Can Legacy Infrastructure be Combined with a Consumption Model?
If you’ve got a third-party legacy kit that’s still current, HPE has the ability to tie this into their GreenLake agreement. Their financial services team can arrange a buyback of this kit and then get your business set up with GreenLake. Or, if you want to maintain the kit, the managed service aspect of GreenLake can be deployed with that until you’re ready to upgrade.
With a consumption model like GreenLake, the power is put back in your hands. As we’ve discussed, it means your business can save money, scale when you need to, and cut back on management time. It also gives you the power to host applications and data where you need to without causing complexity issues. If you’d like to learn more about consumption IT and what this would look like for your business, get in touch with our experts for an obligation-free chat.
We recently caught up with Metro Computers Director and founder Tony Cascio for a quick chat about some of the things that are top of his mind right now.
Q: Can you talk about how Metro Computers and HP work together to deliver sustainable solutions to businesses?
“I guess from my point of view, we’re all here on the same planet and it’s up to all of us to do what we can to help make sure our world is looked after. And I’m proud to say HP thinks the same way. In fact, the industry as a whole is starting to take its responsibilities very seriously and sustainability and recycling is a big part of that.
That’s why we support the programs HP has in place. They help us help our customers by making sure old, unwanted computer equipment, monitors, PCs, printers, inks and toners, individual components and packaging are disposed of in the correct way as opposed to just throwing it all in the bin and adding to landfills.
We’ve also noticed that some of the large corporate and government departments are now actually requesting a sustainability plan in their tender response documents, so it’s something that I think all businesses will need to address sooner rather than later.”
Q: What are some other initiatives businesses can implement to reach their sustainability goals?
“Well, we’ve got solar panels on our buildings that already produce over 32 kW of energy and we’re looking to expand that and increase the existing solar panels across the roof of the new warehouse we’ve bought next door. Plus, we’ve looked at what we can do internally around the office and warehouse and gotten rid of all our paper plates, plastic cutlery and other items that aren’t sustainable.
One of the biggest challenges is the recycling of packaging material. There’s a lot of waste, and obviously we want to make sure we recycle wherever we can, which means re-purposing the boxes that products arrive in so we can also use them to ship products out in.
It’s just little individual things but, when you put it all together, everything we do to minimise the amount of waste we create has a positive impact.”
Q: You mentioned the new warehouse, tell us more?
“I thought you’d never ask. This is something we’re all really proud of. The building we’re currently in has about 580sqm floor space, which includes our offices and a pallet capacity of around 120. But demand keeps increasing, so we decided to purchase the building next door purely for warehousing, increasing our storage capability by another 180 pallets. We recently wrote an article about it for anyone who wants to learn more.”
Q: What does that mean for your customers?
“Everyone recognises that COVID has put increased strain on the supply chain and in some cases delays of ten to twelve weeks are not uncommon. The new warehouse means we can stockpile many more items so we’re ready to respond instantly. It gives businesses peace of mind, knowing what they need is just one phone call or email away.
It’s also one of the reasons we’re seeing more and more businesses look to us for stockholding agreements, where we order and carry stock specifically for them. They know that when they have a performance issue or see an end-of-life deadline approaching, we’re already one step ahead of them and have the right component or replacement product they need on our shelves.”
Q: What are businesses looking for right now?
“From an operating standpoint, it’s all about continuity. Remote working, COVID-affected supply issues and the chance to upgrade offices at a time when it causes minimum disruption have all had an impact on product availability. Overcoming the supply bottleneck is a real challenge, and one our new warehouse should help prevent in the future.
From a hardware point of view, we’re seeing a lot of interest in the latest HP Elite PC range. They’re beautifully designed and super powerful, and that’s proving to be an irresistible combination for a lot of companies.
And because we’re carrying stock and can deliver within a reasonable timeframe, we’re very happy about that too.”
Are you considering upgrading your devices? Get in touch with Metro Computers to learn more about the latest HP devices powered by Intel® and whether they’re the right fit for your business needs.
We’re excited to announce that we’ve expanded into a new warehouse right next door to our current offices. So, what does this mean for your business? In this article, we’ll walk you through the new facility and why it’s great news for you and us.
Meeting Increasing Demands
We pride ourselves on anticipating our customers’ needs and responding quickly—to continue to do that, we needed more space. The building we’re currently in has about 580sqm floor space, which includes our offices and a pallet capacity of around 120. But demand keeps increasing, so we decided to purchase the building next door purely for warehousing, increasing our storage capability by another 180 pallets.
More Stock Availability
Our new warehouse makes things much more convenient because now we’re even more of a one-stop shop. The last thing we want is for a customer to call us and say, “We’ve got five new staff starting on Monday, and we don’t have any notebooks for them. Can you help?” and for us to admit we don’t have stock availability. The new warehouse means we can stockpile many more items, so we’re ready to respond instantly. It gives our customers peace of mind, knowing what they need is just one phone call or an email away.
By increasing the amount of stock we carry, we can widen the range of products we can recommend. It also means we can ship items on the day they’re requested, giving us greater flexibility to deliver a better service for our customers.
Overcoming the Era of Supply Delays
With manufacturers and vendors still encountering supply delays of up to several months, it makes perfect business sense to partner with a company like Metro Computers that has the capacity to carry so much pre-ordered stock. By working with us, our customers can get their hands on the products they need many weeks earlier than if they were ordering on a back-to-back, need-it-now basis.
It’s also one of the reasons we’re seeing more and more businesses look to us for stockholding agreements. COVID has put increased strain on the supply chain, and there’s a shortage of certain components and products in the market right now, which means people are struggling to get stock, and lead times are pushing out to ten or twelve weeks in some cases. Companies with a stockholding agreement with us, where we’re ordering and carrying stock specifically for them, don’t have to worry about that.
A Better Setup for Stockholding Agreements
We’ve always had around 20 or 25 stockholding agreements in place, but the uncertainty caused by COVID has meant businesses are more focused on future-proofing. We’ve seen agreement numbers go up by 66% as companies realise it makes sense to be prepared. The more stockholding agreements you have, the more space you need to hold stock. So, that’s another factor that convinced us to expand our warehouse capacity.
Improving Business Continuity
Eliminating back-to-back ordering means there’s no break in business continuity. As soon as a business realises they have a performance issue or sees an end-of-life deadline approaching, we’re already one step ahead of them and have the right component or replacement product they need on our shelves.
For instance, if a customer is looking to upgrade their team to the latest HP devices powered by Intel®, they can be sure we can meet that demand because of our industry experience, understanding of our customers’ businesses and knowledge of their past ordering history means we can use our data analysis systems to predict what we’re going to sell three or four months down the track and order accordingly.
This is not just good news for our customers; it’s great news for us, too. By carrying stock and delivering within a reasonable timeframe, we’re winning new customers and adding new logos all the time.
How Much Stock Are We Holding Now?
If I look at the dollar value of the stock we’re holding specifically for our customers, it’s about $1.5 million. This is in part due to stockholding agreements because it means it’s been committed to in advance by our customers, allowing us to carry products on a larger scale. It also gives us the ability to respond quickly to critical situations.
How Our Warehouse Fits in with Our Sustainable Focus
We’ve always been committed to sustainability, cleaner energy, recycling and more efficient business practices. In fact, we currently produce over 32kW of energy from our existing solar panels. The new warehouse meant we could expand our solar panels across a larger area right next door.
We’re also enrolled in the HP Amplify program dedicated to reducing waste, disposing of equipment, toners and inks correctly and recycling packaging for monitors, PCs, printers and other office hardware. So, it’s all just part of doing the best we can for our world and our community.
Are you struggling with stock delays or want to upgrade your devices? Get in touch with our team to learn more about how we can help you get what you need faster.
The IT sector accounts for more than 2% of global emissions globally, equivalent to the aviation industry’s carbon footprint. With the continuous expansion of data centres and increasing number of devices, we can only expect this figure to increase over time. The world we live in today is only growing to be more digitally focused, rapidly developing the Internet of Things (IoT), allowing people to seamlessly collect and exchange data via wireless networks. Juniper Research estimates that the number of IoT connections will grow 130%, from 35 billion in 2020 to reaching 83 billion in 2024.
Here at Metro Computers, we refuse to turn a blind eye on the impact we have on the environment. We are dedicated to taking the steps to reduce our carbon footprint, like being part of HP’s Amplify Impact Program to improve our own sustainability performance. The HP Amplify Impact Program is a global structure that rewards partners for performance and collaboration as well as providing insight-driven tools to accelerate digital transformation.
Being an IT provider, we have become serious about recycling. E-waste is responsible for 70% of the toxic chemicals such as lead, cadmium and mercury found in landfill. Along with this, electronic rubbish is growing at three times the rate of any other waste stream, where discarded devices are piling up around the world at 40 million per year. Since our warehouses are stocked with substantial amounts of devices, we have initiated a recycling program, where we dispose of all unwanted device equipment correctly, minimising our landfill contribution. We have extended this to our customers, encouraging them to return empty HP ink toners and cartridges to our in-house collection bin.
We can proudly admit that we have eradicated all plastic plates, and all other single-use plastics in the Metro Computers office. We actively reuse packaging or recycle when necessary and are committed to only growing our recyclable intake so customers can dispose of PC’s, printers and monitors. According to Waste Australia, 98% of the components in a computer can be fully recycled. Even if half of this amount was discarded responsibly, 23,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions would be saved.
In addition to our recycling efforts, we have invested in solar panels on all the buildings that house our device stock. In Australia, coal accounts for 75% of electricity generation. A coal power plant will release around 67,500 tonnes of emissions when producing 67,500 MWh, resulting to 25 times more than the total emissions produced by the 2-MW solar array.
Currently, we have installed 32 kilowatts of solar panels and expect this number to grow as we have plans to purchase more property over the years to come. Get in touch with our team to learn more.