Predictably, members of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission have gotten all bent out of shape over the global contract, surmising that since Lenovo is a Chinese company, the deal could be a plot to enable the Chinese government to spy on the State Department. Of course, anyone with any knowledge of government procurement processes is rolling his eyes. Even if such an elaborate scheme were logistically possible (which, among other things, would require Lenovo President and CEO William Amelio and the other non-Chinese executives running the company to be in a communal coma), the U.S. government's well-established, rigorous security certification process would have uncovered the dastardly deed.
With the spotlight on the fact that the 16,000 computers covered under the contract are being supplied by Lenovo, it was easy to miss the fact that the contract the State Department signed was with CDW Government Inc., a unit of CDW Corp., the big computer-products distributor. And that's the part of this whole thing that really matters. Here's why.
Companies with global operations have fairly limited options when it comes to procuring computer products on a global basis, and none of them are all that attractive. Sourcing locally tends to be problematic not only because the company winds up with a mishmash of technology, but because it's unable to strategically leverage its buying power.
Fred Danback, vice president of global technology at XL Global Services, mentioned to me recently that he's steering clear of that route. "Those local value-added resellers are less important to me than they were 10 years ago," Danback said. "Now I look to leverage the relationships with the HP s and the Microsofts and the IBM s to manage a global account team and have them deal with distribution around the world."
That's no doubt a smart move, but I've talked to too many IT execs who say they get locked into one vendor's technology that way. No matter how agnostic the IBMs and HPs claim to be, vendors will be vendors, and agnosticism has its limits. Dell has made some strides in that regard, but anything positive that Dell is doing is being more than offset by its customer service collapse. I've lost count of the horror stories I've heard from readers who are fed up with Dell, whether it's because of pathetic product support or random account-rep changes that thwart users' attempts to build a decent relationship with the company.
What we need, then, is a truly agnostic computer products supplier with a proven customer-service track record to fill the global void. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, there are none.
But there's hope. The thing that really matters about that State Department contract is the bigger story of CDW's emergence as a key supplier to U.S. government operations around the world. And that, company officials say, is laying the groundwork for an expansion that will position CDW well to fill the void. I can buy that.
The only question is when. The need is immediate, and meeting it will require some bold, speedy, decisive action. Without it, CDW will be stuck with the box-pusher image it's trying so desperately to shed.
Don Tennant is editor in chief of Computerworld. You can contact him at don_tennant@ computerworld.com.