Originally established in France, Cap Gemini recently joined forces with competitor Ernst & Young to become the world's fifth biggest consultancy firm. Around the globe the new organisation employs more than 57,000 people and achieved combined total revenue of more than EUR 4 billion in fiscal 1998.

In addition to conventional management consultancy, "systems transformation" is an important part of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young's work, i.e. IT projects which involve developing customer-specific software and hardware solutions or adapting standard solutions. Given this special focus, it's hardly surprising that the company maintains a range of strategic partnerships with leading providers such as Microsoft, Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, Siebel and Vantive.

The company also provides services in the field of Information Systems Management, meeting the needs of enterprises wishing to outsource responsibility for specific IT activities.

In Germany, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young employs some 600 people at locations in Berlin, Munich, Stuttgart and Düsseldorf, as well as several smaller cities. Their consultancy and IT expertise is in demand across a variety of industries, including commerce and banking, the telecommunications and media industries, and biotech and utility companies.

Because most of the work is done on site at customers' premises, notebooks are an everyday essential for management consultants. Christian von Arend, IT Infrastructure Manager for Central Europe at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, reports that only the small number of in-house workplaces are equipped with desktop PCs. For most staff, notebooks are a crucial personal productivity tool (PPT for short), used primarily for presentations and communication. Some also serve as testbeds in the context of individual projects, or are used for software development.

The notebooks chosen by Cap Gemini Ernst & Young over the last three years or so for this demanding environment have been Toshiba models. The exceptional build quality of the systems played an important part in the decision to go with Toshiba, as well as the desire to benefit from the investment protection offered by a market leader.

Around two years ago the decision was made to purchase only Tecra series models, starting with the Tecra 8000, followed by the Tecra 8100 machines deployed today. Christian von Arend cites the 1.5-year platform stability and the scalability of the series as major benefits that have already saved him a lot of work and greatly simplified the introduction of new systems.

This is one IT manager who is not seduced by processor speed, though. "We make sure we always purchase the CPU with the best trade-off between power and price, even if that means losing out slightly on top-end performance. We'd rather look at the business rationale," he stresses.

Cap Gemini Ernst & Young are also full of praise for Toshiba's support organisation, which even includes Toshiba specialists visiting the company to resolve compatibility issues with third-party hardware. One specific example was configuring Toshiba modems to allow them to work with the Cap Gemini Ernst & Young dial-up server. A new driver soon ensured trouble-free modem access to the corporate network.

Until July 2000, Windows 95 and Office 97 were installed on the Tecras, but since then all new machines have been running Windows 2000 and Office 2000. Arend is clearly pleased to report that so far this has not caused any significant problems on either the old Tecra 8000 systems or the newer 8100s. And ultimately the company has to practice what it preaches to its clients, namely adopting the very latest software.