As businesses of all sizes increasingly manage more devices and device types, device-as-a-service, or DaaS, is gaining popularity. Companies are switching to this model to help them deal with complex management environments, increased costs for replacing devices, and heightened employee expectations of newer and better technology—and to achieve all of this within existing IT budgets. While many vendors are attempting DaaS services, few have the breadth and scale to accomplish it in a way that delivers the expected benefits of moving to a DaaS model.

While there are no specific standards for what DaaS entails yet, there are clear signs that DaaS offerings are quickly evolving to match what businesses need. Today, DaaS offerings exist on a continuum between different goals based on transitioning from a capex to an opex model. At their most basic they are evolutions of the device leasing model, typically combining device leasing with lifecycle management and some support services. I expect that the industry will begin to standardize around this core set of capabilities, and that some DaaS solutions will become global standards that others follow. A next-gen DaaS model should address client business outcomes as a service and not a simple bundling of hardware and IT support services as part of a monthly subscription.

DaaS Benefits

While many industries are moving to as-a-service models, DaaS has specific benefits that make it attractive to multiple stakeholders within an organization.

• Predictable — One of the most direct benefits is to have one provider responsible for everything and one contract to manage. This simplifies resolving issues, whether they come down to contracts, financing, support, or even device procurement.
• Capital Efficiency — DaaS helps businesses save money and increase cash flow, improving productivity and user satisfaction, while supporting companies to shift from a Capex to Opex model.
• Flexibility — Using DaaS enables a more flexible approach so that an organization can pay what it needs when it needs to, whether in a growth or downsizing phase.
• Optimal Productivity — Companies can keep employees working and happy by updating devices more frequently, while also helping to offload some IT functions with advanced support services, including predictive maintenance.
• Sustainability — Employees can utilize devices to their full potential, then hand them in to be recycled or reconditioned for further use to optimize value for all parties involved.

Lenovo’s TruScale DaaS Solution

It makes sense that Lenovo would emerge as a major player in the DaaS space, it has the unique position of being an OEM and a service provider and evolved its DaaS offering over the course of the last two years with a richer focus on services and solutions. Through its TruScale Device as a Service solution, the company offers one of the broadest arrays of DaaS-enabled products, ranging from smartphones to smart retail devices. (While Lenovo also makes servers and other datacenter products, those are considered infrastructure and, for an as-a-service model, would fall under IaaS.) This breadth gives enterprises a wide array of choices for what kinds of devices they want to offer their employees. Whether we’re talking about smartphones (from Lenovo unit Motorola), PCs, tablets, or VR/AR devices, Lenovo has all of them available via DaaS.

To develop its innovative next-generation Device-as-a Service (DaaS) offering, Lenovo utilizes its advanced Care-of-One platform. This platform evaluates the client’s environment, pinpointing specific end user challenges, designing user personas, and identifying improvement opportunities. Based on this analysis, it builds personalized profiles that include device models and configurations, application access rights, and bespoke security and service configurations required for their persona and role. This holistic approach is designed to lower the cost of ownership while enhancing both user satisfaction and productivity. The platformuses Lenovo’s Device Intelligence Plus (LDI+) service which facilitates device-independent health monitoring. This feature provides deep device insights that are critical for the ongoing maintenance of devices and proactive and preventive resolution of issues to minimize downtime.

Furthermore, the Care-of-One platform incorporates sophisticated automated orchestration underpinned by generative AI technology. This enables the precise assembly of service bundles tailored to each user, considering their specific needs and the financial parameters of the business. Lenovo extends its DaaS solution with comprehensive lifecycle management services. These encompass the entire spectrum from procurement and deployment to configuration, ongoing maintenance, and eventual decommissioning. This end-to-end management not only alleviates the burden on IT staff, allowing them to focus on other critical tasks but also introduces efficiencies through zero-touch deployment, centralized asset management, and managed DaaS services. This comprehensive approach ensures that every aspect of management is covered within Lenovo’s DaaS solution.  A natural language interface for users provides ease of use and convenience that dramatically improves employee experience.

Lenovo’s strategy yields significant financial benefits, with the company reporting reductions in IT maintenance expenses ranging from 10% to 40%, alongside a decrease in system downtimes by 30% to 50%. These improvements are attributed to the AI-driven enhancements within its managed services, showcasing the tangible value that Lenovo’s DaaS solution brings to businesses seeking to optimize their IT operations.

In addition to offering full volume flexibility at no cost, Lenovo also offers Flex Up, Flex Down, and Remote “Flex Pause” workforce scaling in most regions. This kind of flexibility allows companies to grow and downsize their device deployments on-demand without incurring unnecessary costs. TruScale also embeds sustainability across every stage of a customer’s IT lifecycle with sustainably manufactured, packaged, delivered, and decommissioned devices. It also offers carbon footprint visibility and options for offsetting an existing carbon footprint.

Lenovo’s TruScale DaaS solution is not a one-size-fits-all approach. In fact, one of Lenovo’s strengths is that it offers contracts based on each business’s unique needs—not merely a series of SLAs—before the contract is signed. Lenovo’s commercial models go beyond just subscription-based DaaS; the company also offers pay-per-user DaaS, device lifecycle as a service, outcome-based DaaS, and even on-demand device provisioning. Lenovo also offers flexible financing and invoicing options, which include direct lending, straight leasing, and hub-to-hub invoicing. Because of Lenovo’s global reach, it can offer worldwide financing coverage. This enables Lenovo to help set a global standard for DaaS, for itself and for the industry.

Conclusion

Lenovo’s TruScale DaaS solution takes what a basic DaaS solution should offer and builds on it greatly, drawing on the company’s strengths to create a unique offering that could be considered the global standard for DaaS. Lenovo’s wide array of devices, tailored solutions backed by GAI, world-class ITSM solutions, predictive support tools, and flexibility in device deployment and financing all enable it to help customers reach their objectives within reasonable budgets and timeframes. I expect that Lenovo’s DaaS model may become the standard by which the rest of the industry starts to deploy DaaS.