The college has ordered 48 CELSIUS W530 workstations for its games design lab, having previously purchased 24 units last year. Both orders have been placed with Fujitsu Partner, IML Technology, which has offices in Nottingham and also in Birmingham.
“The CELSIUS workstations combine a stable platform with fast processing capabilities, which means that students can render 3D games in a third of the time it took with the previous hardware.” Said Neil Hutchinson, IT Project Coordinator at Derby College. “The investment is a positive move for the college, as it will give students greater flexibility and time in which to complete their key modules.”
Derby College runs three full-time groups on the games design courses. Until now, students from all three groups have been sharing the 24 CELSIUS workstations that have already been installed, as well as a classroom of off-the-shelf desktop PCs, which do not offer comparable performance to the workstations, thus limiting productivity.
“Fujitsu listened to our requirements and expectations, and shown great interest in how we operate in order to meet our needs,” continued Hutchinson. “The team’s approach is very professional and feels more like being part of a team rather than the usual box-shifting experience,” Hutchinson added.
“This success is just the latest in what we hope and expect will be a whole series of deployments of CELSIUS workstations in further education. We have a very experienced team of education specialists within Fujitsu and we are working closely with our partners to ensure that both we and they fully understand and can meet the needs of education customers,” said Ash Merchant, Head of Business Development for Education in the Fujitsu Technology Products Group.
“Fujitsu has certainly helped cement the relationship between IML Technology and Derby College. The knowledge that Fujitsu has within the education sector was paramount when deciding which vendor to work with and Fujitsu have certainly gone the extra mile in ensuring that customer satisfaction has been maintained at all times,” said John Lester, Group Sales Director at IML.