Connection, Lenovo, and HCPS partner for education success

Hillsborough County Public Schools, HCPS, located in Florida, is the seventh largest school district in the United States. With outdated systems and hardware, the technology team at HCPS recognised a need to update legacy solutions to support the work of its teachers and the education of its students.

The evolving education digital landscape means more than simply supplying new computers. Devices need to be staged, serviced, bundled, and deployed to ensure a secure and positive experience for students, educators, and staff.

The key outcome realised in Lenovo’s and Connection’s partnership is the sustainable support for HCPS and an outlook that leverages suppliers more as partners than as vendors. With longstanding support for HCPS, Lenovo understands the county’s needs. Its strategic partnership with Connection brought together a trio of teams to optimise the supply chain, leverage funding opportunities, and deliver ongoing device support for both students and staff. 

With a solid vision for the future, as expressed by Larry Kirsch, President, Connection Public Sector Solutions, the continued service support from Lenovo is instrumental in the HCPS strategy for ongoing success, student retention, and improvement of educational services—preparing the county’s students for the real world. 

“Whether it's a one-to-one initiative or supporting the staff, which is obviously critical, it seems they went a very long time without technology equity,” says Kirsch.

Lenovo and Connection leveraged their supply chain excellence throughout the engagement, enabling the team to deliver devices in a no-touch environment. As a result of this work, the partnership provided more than 125,000 endpoint devices to HCPS through Connection’s Technology Integration and Distribution Center (TIDC). 

One of the key factors that contributed to the successful deployment of devices to HCPS was formulating a solid logistical plan. The TIDC team ensured the units were queued to ship full truckloads at a time. This not only streamlined the shipping process but also reduced transportation costs and minimised the carbon footprint of the deployment.

“At Lenovo and Connection, we have the end-user top of our mind. And, in education, the end-user is the student and teacher, both of whom now have the modern technology needed to maximise the educational experience and inspire the future of learning,” says Christian Rivera, K12 Account Executive, South Florida, at Lenovo. 

Moving forward in the partnership, Kirsch explains how this working relationship with Lenovo and HCPS has the potential to go beyond the endpoint device service to provide support from other angles, including the infrastructure and security prospects of HCPS along with staff and student training. 

“We certainly want them to have technical training and an understanding of what they’ve got at their fingertips. In addition, future infrastructure security is really the next thing to tackle,” Kirsch says.

Read the full HCPS digital report HERE.