Hardware for hire: The new age of Device-as-a-Service dawns

Device-as-a-service (DaaS), the practice of meeting IT needs including PCs, smartphones and other mobile computing devices on a service provision model, isn’t entirely new, but it has taken on a new urgency in the last two years.

At this point many of us would be grateful to never hear another word about the Covid-19 pandemic but, like it or not, there is no question that working practices have changed as a result of it. Remote and hybrid work have become commonplace, with all manner of business operations now being performed from home and, now that restrictions have been rescinded, from co-working spaces.

Clearly this is something businesses have struggled with, not least in IT procurement, provisioning and support, but DaaS has appeared on the horizon as a potential solution.

It is a relatively recent development. A 2020 study from Accenture, ‘Device as a Service: Welcome to your next supply chain model’, found that DaaS is less than a decade old, reporting that in 2015 no major manufacturer offered desktop hardware on DaaS basis.

Of course, this is not the entire picture: back in the pre-PC era leasing was the standard way of obtaining a computer, with costly mainframes only rarely bought outright. More common devices, too, such as photocopiers were also routinely leased.

Today, things have changed: first of all, DaaS is not quite leasing, and secondly, any device you like, from desktops and laptops to tablets and beyond, is available on a DaaS basis.

While DaaS agreements have some similarities to leases, they also differ in typically not having buyout options as well as having other components such as built-in upgrade cycles, maintenance, and support and device management.

According to Tara Gale, client solutions country lead at Dell Technologies Ireland, the move to DaaS demonstrates an evolution in IT procurement. While the pandemic caused a rush to remote working, the businesses that thrived were able to do so, in part, because they had a flexible approach to devices.

“The most successful companies over the last few years have invested in tech agility,” she said.

The right device

DaaS is not the first proposed shift in how and what devices are used for work. In the 2010s stuttering attempts were made to enable workers to use their own equipment. This ‘bring your own device’ policy proved a problem, however.

Firstly, it created major support headaches for perennially stretched IT teams. Secondly, it raised questions about why workers were effectively supplying capital equipment to businesses alongside the labour.

Most importantly, though, it was a security and compliance nightmare, massively increasing what is now called, in industry jargon, the ‘attack surface’. Home devices used for non-work purposes are inherently insecure and outside the control of the business.

Steve Rowe, Apple business development manager at systems integrator and service provider Presidio, said that DaaS is one method for improving security and compliance as it allows for proper device control.

“Among the challenges IT departments are facing around technology, the biggest one is hybrid: balancing security with a great user experience during the pandemic has been difficult,” he said.

Interestingly, the spectre of the personal device has reappeared, but in a different manifestation: as people have come to integrate tech more deeply into their lives they now expect work devices to meet the same standards as the sleek toys they have chosen for themselves.

“People have been using their own devices a lot more while they've been working from home, and that sets user-experience expectations quite high,” said Rowe.

A major selling point of DaaS is price, but both Gale and Rowe said that it was not just about slashing costs. Instead, flexibility in both equipment and cost was key.

Feedback from surveyed Dell’s customers found that 54 per cent reported an interest in improvements to cost structures, and with a move from capital expenditure to operating expenditure seen as providing greater flexibility.

“A lot of technology goes out of date quite quickly. If you consider the collaboration tools we [now] are forced to use, the systems we had three years ago really are struggling to keep up,” said Gale.

She said that overall PC lifecycle costs can be reduced by around 20 per cent through DaaS, and that further efficiencies were made via built-in support that frees IT departments from routine maintenance.

Rowe said that a wide angle view was the best one to take to DaaS, rather than a narrow focus on cost cutting.

“Cost optimisation is one aspect, including moving from that cap-ex model to op-exx but I always try to say, when I am consulting with customers, that while cost can be the primary factor you should be looking at total cost of ownership,” he said.

Deeper understanding of costs can be developed, too. Rowe said that future contracts or contract extensions can be based not on guesstimates but on actual reported usage data.

“We would, on a managed service for device-as-a-service, monitor the usage around support issues and offer a monthly or quarterly report on that. It's about service improvement, continuous improvement and how customers interact with the service,” he said.

While every development in IT seems to go through the same hype cycle, there is a sense that DaaS really is a viable response to radically altered circumstances.

Gale said that DaaS worked for everyone as it allowed businesses to not only tailor their IT needs, but shift unwanted burdens back to the supplier, including, if businesses want to, by having them send out devices that are truly turnkey ‘switch it on and go’ solutions.

“It really is a different world from the on-prem ‘this is what we roll out because this is what your role is’. Security has taken priority. How do you deploy to your end users these days? Is it shipped from the factory? Is it sent to an IT team member’s home who then images it?”