Blue Connections IT and AMD: responsible IT, strong results

Blue Connections IT and AMD: responsible IT, strong results

Systems integrator refreshes its laptop fleet, hits stringent climate targets, and deepens customer trust by standardizing on AMD Ryzen™ PRO processors

Blue Connections IT started as a four-person reseller in Melbourne nearly thirty years ago. Today, the company is a leading full-service systems integrator that predominantly services mid-market and enterprise customers. With about 170 employees and roughly 100 million Australian dollars (AUD) in annual revenue, the firm manages everything from device lifecycle services to large-scale refresh projects for some of Australia’s largest organizations.

Growth has only sharpened the environmental ambitions of Blue Connections IT. The integrator has held Climate Active carbon-neutral certification for three years and is driving toward net-zero emissions by 2035. “Our environmental impact is tangible, and reducing it is a core strategy,” Chief Executive Officer Gordon Brownell said. By late 2023, however, the company’s ageing laptops were working against those goals. Battery life routinely fell short for staff who, as Brownell put it, “work remotely, work on the road, work from anywhere,” leaving them unplugged for long stretches.

The devices’ appetite for power frustrated hybrid workers and put extra pressure on Blue Connections IT to live up to the energy-saving standards it encourages its clients to adopt, prompting the team to evaluate Lenovo notebooks powered by AMD Ryzen™ PRO processors for a more efficient alternative. According to Brownell, the AMD CPU-based systems offered exactly what Blue Connections IT needed, “PCs that help us live our own net-zero plan and give our people a faster, longer-lasting tool for hybrid work.”

Better performance, less power makes for an easy call

The Blue Connections IT team started with a trial. Engineers installed an image of the company’s standard operating environment on several Lenovo ThinkPad systems built on AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 5650U processors, ran security checks, and put the devices through a typical week of workloads. “Our techs pushed the AMD demos hard and came back with an unqualified thumbs-up,” said Erica Smith, Director of Marketing and Vendor Alignment.

The numbers and the user experience made the next step obvious. “AMD CPU-powered laptops deliver better performance and lower power draw that fit our environmental strategy, so they were the clear choice,” Brownell said. Energy savings were particularly compelling. Brownell explained, “Some of our enterprise customers have 4,500 or 5,000 staff. When you spread the power reduction across that many people, it makes a difference.” Performance was close behind. “Line up a comparable device with a competing processor and the AMD one simply outperforms it,” he added.

With both criteria met, deployment moved quickly and easily. Smith noted that Blue Connections IT’s catalog now “has a strong alignment to AMD across our product portfolio.” Brownell confirmed the result on the ground, “Nearly ninety percent of our end-user devices are now AMD CPU-powered laptops.”

AMD PRO Technologies delivered security, control, stability

Security and fleet management mattered just as much as raw speed. AMD PRO Security features, such as AMD Memory Guard’s full-memory encryption and AMD Shadow Stack protection, now safeguard every endpoint at the hardware level. “If you don’t have robust security and remote manageability like AMD offers, you won’t even get a seat at the table,” Brownell said. AMD PRO Manageability lets administrators patch or recover devices over the network.

AMD PRO Business Ready features give IT a predictable platform with 18 months of image consistency and at least two years of processor availability. That stability earned its keep during Blue Connections IT’s Windows 11 rollout. “We’ve already done the transition, and it was straightforward on AMD,” Brownell said, pointing to the locked-down image and steady driver stack. For Erica Smith, the payoff is broader: “AMD Ryzen PRO processors let us practice exactly what we preach when we advise customers on secure hybrid work.”

Faster models, happier users, and a lighter ESG footprint

The first teams to notice a lift were finance and business analysis. Monthly reporting models that once bogged down laptops now finish sooner, giving analysts more time to dig into fresh data. No department has logged a single performance complaint since the migration, which wrapped up in under a year with almost no overtime.

Battery life proved just as transformative for hybrid staff. Energy efficient AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 5650U processors with adaptive power management deliver up to 24 hours of batter life¹, and the extra headroom is tangible in daily use. “The better battery life made possible by AMD is an absolute boon,” Brownell said.

Those lower watt-hours flow directly into Blue Connections IT’s ESG ledger, helping the firm stay on track for its 2035 net-zero goal while giving employees faster tools that run unplugged all day.

Better performance. Lower cost. Less power. You can have all three with AMD.

Brownell distills the business case for AMD to three metrics: performance, price, and power. “When customers push back, saying, ‘That can’t be right. You can’t have the perfect trilogy,’ we let devices powered by AMD Ryzen PRO CPUs speak for themselves. We send a demo device and, inevitably, AMD delivers better performance at a lower price and power consumption.”

The proof converts skeptics quickly. One financial-services customer adopted AMD laptops seven years ago, has refreshed twice since, and “has never even asked for a competing equivalent.” Perception has shifted, too. “Today, the profile of AMD resonates with customers and staff. When you tell someone that we’re replacing their device with an AMD device, they see it as an improvement.”

Erica Smith sees the same momentum inside the channel. “In the last five years, AMD has positioned itself as a leader. Its sustainability, cost-saving, and power-usage messaging is what I hear when I think of AMD as an alternative.”

For Blue Connections IT, those tangible gains and enthusiastic partner support make AMD the default choice in every device refresh conversation and an especially powerful story to share with clients pursuing their own efficiency goals.

Looking ahead

Today, Blue Connections IT is turning its attention to workplace AI, from Microsoft Copilot trials to service-desk automation. “AMD is at the forefront of the technology we need for the future with AI,” Brownell said. The integrator now practices what it recommends: lower carbon, higher performance, stronger security, and it shares a richer, data-driven narrative with every organization seeking a sustainable, cost-effective PC strategy.