District Office Refresh on a Fixed Budget
A district office has 60 desktop PCs, all 8 years old, running a 32-bit operating system on 4 GB RAM and 500 GB mechanical hard disks. Staff use a browser-based land record system (needs 8 GB RAM recommended), office suites, and occasional large scanned PDFs. The office has a one-time capital budget of BDT 1,800,000 and an annual maintenance budget of BDT 120,000. Vendors offer three options: (A) 60 new entry-level desktops at BDT 28,000 each with 3-year warranty; (B) upgrade all 60 units with 8 GB RAM and 256 GB SSDs at BDT 9,000 each, keeping old CPUs and 32-bit OS; (C) buy 30 new desktops and rotate the best 30 old units to light-duty roles. Staff report the land record portal times out on current machines, and the office cannot afford downtime during a national land survey starting in six weeks.
1. Which option should the office choose, and what technical facts drive the decision?
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Option B is attractive on cost (BDT 540,000) but fails on a hard constraint: a 32-bit OS cannot address 8 GB of RAM usefully, so the RAM upgrade would be wasted unless a 64-bit OS is also installed. Old CPUs may still fail the portal's recommended 8 GB requirement for other reasons, and mechanical-disk failure rates rise sharply after eight years. Option A costs BDT 1,680,000, which fits the capital budget and gives uniform 64-bit machines with warranty, but leaves only BDT 120,000 for everything else and no spare machines. Option C costs roughly BDT 840,000 plus upgrades for the retained units, fits the budget, and provides a natural spare pool - the 30 oldest units can be cannibalised for parts. Given the six-week deadline and the need for reliability during a national survey, Option C is the best judgement call: it meets the RAM/OS requirement, preserves a maintenance reserve, and hedges against supply delay. The key reasoning is that RAM upgrades without an OS architecture change are a false economy.
2. What risks should the office document before committing, and how should each be mitigated?
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First, migration risk: 30 new machines must be imaged, joined to the domain, and tested against the land record portal before the survey starts. Mitigate with a pilot of five units in week one and a standard image. Second, data migration risk: scanned PDFs and local files must be moved to a server or backed up before old disks are retired; mitigate with a verified backup and a two-week retention of old disks. Third, licence risk: the 64-bit OS and office suite licences must be counted for 30 new plus 30 retained units; confirm volume licensing before purchase. Fourth, supply risk: vendors may slip delivery; write a penalty clause and keep 5 old units as hot spares. Fifth, skills risk: staff may resist new machines; schedule short training. Each risk should have an owner and a date.
3. How should the annual maintenance budget of BDT 120,000 be allocated?
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With 60 machines, the budget is BDT 2,000 per machine per year - too little for full vendor support on all units. A defensible allocation: keep warranty coverage on the 30 new units (already included), and spend the BDT 120,000 on (a) a small spare-parts pool (RAM, SSDs, power supplies) at about BDT 60,000, (b) antivirus and backup software renewals at about BDT 30,000, and (c) BDT 30,000 contingency for emergency repairs. The reasoning is that the retained old units are the likely failure points, so parts on the shelf reduce downtime more cheaply than per-call vendor contracts. This should be reviewed after six months using a simple failure log.