Vendors donate time, equipment to help government
Vendors donate time, equipment to help government
- By Susan M. Menke
- Sep 17, 2001
Some vendors are loaning equipment and technical assistance to government organizations that suffered losses from last week's terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
Ken Grimsley, a sales vice president at GTSI Corp. of Chantilly, Va., said the company's offer to accept verbal IT orders over the phone has drawn a response from government buyers [see story at
www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/17073-1.html].
'They're asking for stuff that can be available quickly,' he said. 'We've made a lot of shipments without anything in writing.' The shipments have included handheld and desktop computers, servers and network equipment. Some agencies have also volunteered to relinquish computer equipment they bought but haven't yet installed so that it can go to emergency workers, he said.
One of the most popular items, he said, is a high-speed satellite network hookup from Tachyon Inc. of San Diego that can be set up rapidly.
'You can't provision a T1 line in a disaster area,' Grimsley said.
The Tachyon TCP/IP broadband capacity is about equivalent to a 1.5-Mbps T1, he said. GTSI engineers volunteered their services for the installations, and Tachyon is loaning the satellite terminals to government agencies for up to 60 days. Cisco Systems Inc. engineers also volunteered to help agencies set up wireless LANs, Grimsley said.