IT Trend 2021: Device as a Service
Digital transformation and working from home are not the only major trends spurred by the pandemic. Device as a Service has been on the rise as well since March 2020. What exactly does DAAS imply? Instead of being responsible for the purchase, installation and configuration of hardware yourself, you outsource this as a company so that your IT team can focus on core business projects. You don't pay anything up front, but a fixed amount per workstation per month.
This may seem like a lease model, there is, however, a big difference. DAAS is all about the services and less about the device. Because we with the Bechtle DAAS solution take care of the entire lifecycle of your devices.
Thanks to DAAS, the IT team workload can be completely shifted to strategic decisions and innovation, because devices are delivered to the employee's home or office, completely ready to use. As a consequence the local IT team does not have to deal with time-consuming tasks such as the unboxing and installation of security software on each device. Let’s take as an example the complete renewal of devices for a company with 300 workstations! Many IT managers may feel anxious just reading the previous sentence.
A year ago, when we were all working from home overnight, there was suddenly a huge demand for laptops. As a result, the shift to an as-a-service model grew tremendously. Because it quickly became clear how time-consuming it was to fully configure and prepare devices and get them to employees' homes as well.
Organisations' purchasing patterns have changed since then; they prefer to have secure and ready-to-use devices for employees fast, without having to look after them in-house. Organisations today are looking for services that make their way of working easier. Because at the end of the day, what matters to the end customer is this: they want to be unburdened. Is there a broken device? Then they want it fixed the day after with a new ready-to-use device, so that there is as little downtime as possible. This is feasible with DAAS. Thanks to proactive monitoring, we receive a notification if a defect is found on a device. With our swap service, we then ensure that the employee in question receives a new, ready-to-use device the following day. Such things are very valuable to organisations, especially since in-house IT staff do not have to deal with them.
The interest in DAAS has grown enormously due to the pandemic. Has your organisation already thought about it?
Kristof Neubauer 
