Optimising business costs with Device as a Service

  • Technical Articles
  • Feb 01,19
With hardware still accounting for nearly 42 per cent of total IT budgets, major IT leaders and hardware manufacturers are considering cost-cutting as one of their top organisational priorities.
Optimising business costs with Device as a Service

With hardware still accounting for nearly 42 per cent of total IT budgets, major IT leaders and hardware manufacturers are considering cost-cutting as one of their top organisational priorities. According to Santosh Prabhakaran, the concept of Device as a Service (DaaS) could future-proof the IT department of OEMs and tier1 suppliers in terms of cost, security and automation. This article will show how.
 
As per the latest research reports, the top-most priority of large global companies while allocating their IT budget is the need to upgrade outdated Information Technology (IT) and software infrastructure while also fortifying against the increasing information security concerns. Today, amidst the ‘UBER-ized - as a Service’ age with cloud-hosted solutions accounting for nearly 20 per cent of all IT budgets, hardware costs still remain at 42 per cent. With major IT leaders and hardware manufacturers considering cost-cutting as one of their top organisational priorities, let’s understand how the concept of Device as a Service (DaaS) could future-proof the IT department of OEMs and tier1 suppliers in terms of cost, security, automation, and more.
 
How was DaaS born?
At the dawn of the IT boom in the early nineties, only large corporates with deep pockets could invest in buying computers for business use. However, within the next decade itself, even smaller enterprises were compelled to use computers for sustaining growth in the digital world. Soon hardware leasing companies and even technology giants like Dell, HP, Fujitsu, Siemens and IBM started renting out mainframes, desktops, laptops and several other computing peripherals for a fixed monthly rental. On the flip side, enterprises soon felt how these rented PCs were more of a bane than a boon, as hardware technology continued to outpace software requirements. Leased hardware were barely serviced, let alone being upgraded during their average lease term (as per Gartner) of 36 months for desktops and 24 months for notebooks.
 
What is DaaS?
Post 2010, as cloud computing gained popularity by starting with Software as a Service (SaaS), it pervaded into web applications or Platform as a Service (PaaS), data centers or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and also into Desktop-as-a-Service that also started providing a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) for organisations that promoted mobile workplace solutions. Therefore, it was only a few years ago that DaaS combined solutions such as PC-as-a-Service (PCaaS), Network Device-as-a-Service (NDaaS) and more to stand inclusively as ‘Device as a Service’ model that combines any type of expensive hi-tech hardware leasing and end-to-end lifecycle services into a single, per-device, monthly subscription contract.
 
Unlike purchasing hardware that often limits the organisational ability to upgrade as equipment ages – DaaS includes full asset management, managed services, and a range of technology refresh options. Much of this lifecycle management such as staging, updating, inventory management, and disposal is highly administrative and prevents technology  departments from focusing on more strategic initiatives. With DaaS, there is complete hardware, support, analytics, and unified endpoint management solution that promises lower costs and enhances cost predictability, thereby offloading the time-consuming tasks of supporting, securing, and managing multi-OS devices.
 
What could DaaS do for your business?
DaaS offers following benefits:
  • Control & optimise costs: DaaS provides large OEMs and Tier1 suppliers across various industries with predictable pricing and forecasting that lowers the total cost of ownership. By moving device purchases from capital expenditures to operational expenditures, these organisations gain greater visibility into their IT budget. This enhanced predictability in expenditure provides them the flexibility required to divert resources towards business priorities.
  • Improve scalability: With a convenient single price per device, under the DaaS model, organisations can upscale or downscale the number of devices based on business demands, and refresh technology over time based on customer and employee requirements. DaaS also facilitates choosing a mix of devices such as notebooks, laptops, desktops, mobile, and specialized devices like AR/VR devices that are appropriate for the business.
  • Enhance efficiency: DaaS also frees up the IT personnel’s bandwidth from asset & data management tasks to reduce administrative costs & time of such resources. This increases end-user productivity and optimises IT resources which can now be made to focus on core business operations or more strategic projects such as data security.
  • Manage device usage: By remotely managing operating system upgrades, patches & policy settings and facilitating a self-service portal-like experience that remotely identifies & troubleshoots hardware issues along with data restoration, DaaS takes away the pangs & pains of technicality and infuses ‘ease’ into the business equation.
  • Deal with disposal: Every electronic device needs to be disposed of after a certain period. With a trusted DaaS provider, enterprises can offload the regulatory compliances and hassles usually associated with disposing of any piece of equipment. Such a provider also ensures that businesses recover the best residual hardware value, after wiping all sensitive information from the devices.
 
What are some exemplary use-cases of DaaS?
By leveraging DaaS, the cost of doing business has decreased while the ease of doing business has considerably increased. Starting from newly established diagnostic labs to early-stage healthcare startups, DaaS could help reduce the initial capital expenditure and mitigate the risks of device obsolescence. Even consumer product or hi-tech equipment manufacturers could use DaaS solutions to create and maintain a competitive edge by manufacturing with the latest equipment while keeping procurement and maintenance costs from crossing manageable levels. However, the most beneficial uses of DaaS will come to light when analytics-driven device optimization enables proactive and predictive maintenance of hardware.
 
What’s the futuristic quest for Daas?
As the list of tech-giants offering DaaS solutions increase every year, the top three players currently leading this race are Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft Corporation, and VMware. With Motorola Solutions and Citrix Systems breathing down the neck of the current industry leaders, the global market for DaaS is predicted to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 9 per cent to reach $ 8 billion by 2023. The need for updated technological equipment at the right cost had fueled the creation of DaaS. However, what is all set to drive the future of DaaS is the emergence of a drastically new workforce with evolved working styles that need to be catered to with transformative technology and office experiences.
 
About the Author:
Santosh Prabhakaran is the Senior Technical Architect - Hi-Tech Vertical at QuEST Global. In this role, he focuses on architecting and designing customised software solutions for customer needs. He has more than 18 years of experience working in the software and embedded industry. During tenure at various organisations, Prabhakaran has handled multiple roles ranging from technical lead to delivery manager handling different types of projects. He is a graduate in computer applications from IGNOU University.

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