Link and Motivation Reduces Procurement Costs with AMD

Thinkpads Powered by AMD Ryzen™ PRO 4650U Processors Dramatically Reduce Client PC Procurement Costs

Link and Motivation, Inc. is a human resource consulting company and cloud service business widely known for its unique “Motivation Engineering” technology. Link and Motivation, Inc. updated their entire employee fleet to Lenovo ThinkPad T14 notebooks powered by AMD Ryzen™ PRO processors to ensure high performance and stability while keeping installation costs low.

Meeting remote work requirements

Link and Motivation, Inc. supports corporate transformation in hiring, training, systems, and environment based on their proprietary core technology. In March 2022, the company became the first to acquire an ISO 30414 certification in Japan. It also established the Edison Management Association, a general incorporated association aiming to nurture talented young individuals through industry-government-academia collaboration. The company aims to maximize employee motivation and job satisfaction by introducing a “compatible work” system that takes advance of both in-office and remote working shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to make this type of work possible, it was necessary to fundamentally rethink the company’s IT system.

Selecting AMD processor-powered devices for the new fleet

At that time, the rental period of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon originally used was about to expire, and it became necessary to select the model of the next client PC. Therefore, we decided to renew the rental system based on the premise of Compatible Work, and to make it as easy as possible for employees to take their PCs with them between their home and our office, we decided to basically provide and loan laptop PCs to all employees, except for some tasks. Also, considering the possibility of introducing VDI in the future, the company decided to introduce a product with a good balance between cost and performance, rather than unnecessarily pursuing the processing power of client terminals. After comparing several laptop PC products that met these requirements from various manufacturers, the company ultimately chose the 14-inch Lenovo ThinkPad T14S powered by the AMD Ryzen™ 5 PRO 4650U processor.

“The biggest reason for our selection was its overwhelmingly superior cost performance compared to other companies’ products,” Ito said. “The ThinkPad X1 Carbon laptops we originally used were equipped with Intel CPUs. We chose a model with the AMD Ryzen™ 5 PRO 4650U processor, which has about the same specifications as the Intel CPU. We were able to save significantly more money with AMD than with comparable models from other companies.” The company has been using the ThinkPad series for a long time, proving its reliability and positive user experience. Many of the employees that they had become so accustomed to the ThinkPad’s unique TrackPoint operation that they could not switch to other pointer devices or mice at this point. “For a while, we had users choose their favorite laptop PCs from multiple manufacturers, but this mix of different models from other vendors quickly increased the workload for PC management. So this time, we decided to unify vendors and models to avoid such a situation,” Ito said.

Comparing performance and stability

This was the company’s first full-scale introduction of PCs equipped with AMD CPUs, but according to Ito, there were no concerns at all. “We were not worried at all about the fact that it would not be Intel CPU. At the beginning, we were thinking of implementing VDI, so we were not thinking of running special or heavy processing on client PCs. AMD products already had a proven track record not only in the consumer field but also in the enterprise field. We didn’t have any negative image at all,” Ito said. Before deciding on full-scale implementation, Lenovo provided the company with a verification unit and conducted tests to ensure exceptional performance and reliability. The information systems department conducted tests on actual business operations using several models with difference specifications. They found that the operations of the AMD processor-powered laptops was completely comparable to those of the Intel processor-powered devices they had used until that point. Following the promising tests, Link and Motivation worked with a rental company to install 1,000 units across their fleet in 2021. New AMD processor-powered ThinkPad laptops have continued to be introduced to the workplace to replace Intel-powered laptops that have become slow and unstable, according to users. Kazuko Noma, manager of the IT and facility unit of the system design department reported that there has been no change in the management of client PCs after the migration. “The change from Intel CPUs to AMD CPUs did not cause any change in the work of the administrators or increase their workload,” Noma said. “We have received no negative feedback from our employees. On the contrary, we have received comments from that their PCs have become lighter and their work environment has improved because the client environment has been refreshed with the new laptops.”

Introducing additional units in 2023

The company plans to introduce an additional 500 AMD Ryzen™ 5 PRO 4650U processor-based ThinkPad T14S laptops by the end of 2023. In anticipation of long-term use, the company will introduce models with Microsoft 11 preinstalled. In order to further strengthen security measures, the company plans to add a fingerprint authentication sensor option to the laptops. According to Ito, the company plans to continue to emphasize cost performance as well as functionality and convenience when selecting client PCs and other IT equipment. In this regard, he said, Lenovo products with AMD CPUs will continue to attract a great deal of attention. “I believe that only Lenovo and AMD have the advantage of being able to offer an overwhelming price difference in the same specification range compared to other manufacturers. I hope that Lenovo and AMD will continue to develop products that boast overwhelming cost performance, thanks to their unrelenting corporate efforts.”