Lenovo ready for XaaS revolution

MANILA, Philippines — Much like how Spotify and Apple Music ask us to reexamine and reevaluate our notion of music ownership, the so-called anything-as-a-service (XaaS) revolution is leveraging technology to challenge long-held beliefs with regard to productivity tools in the enterprise realm.

XaaS is the “growing diversity of services over the internet via cloud computing as opposed to being provided locally, or on premises.” Within its wide purview is device-as-a-service (XaaS) which, according to a Lenovo white paper, “helps organizations mitigate these costs by taking a typical hardware device (such as a laptop, desktop, tablet, or mobile phone), bundling it with a variety of services and software, and offering it to a customer for a monthly subscription fee. It gives customers one contract and just one provider to hold accountable.”

Lenovo says this is consistent with a burgeoning “subscription economy” where “customers want to pay for what they want, when they want it, and eliminate unnecessary waste.” While it is not new (consider magazine subscription, for instance), more recently “a large number of industries have begun to pivot away from traditional go-to-market approaches to better meet customer expectations.” There’s Microsoft, Netflix and Amazon Prime. Many have long abandoned buying DVDs of movies in favor of renting them online or purchasing files.

In an interview with The STAR on the sidelines of launch event where five AMD-powered devices (the Yoga 530, IdeaPad 720S, IdeaPad 330, IdeaPad 330S and the IdeaPad 130) were unveiled, Lenovo Philippines country general manager Michael Ngan said “it’s the next big thing for IT. I think that in the next few years, it will dominate IT; it’s a game-changer that will change how people see IT. It’s built around services.”

As companies continue the inevitable trod toward digitalization, Lenovo is seeing an emerging trend to “balance the need to drive innovation and maintain total cost of operations (TCO),” exactly the kind of challenge that the XaaS business model lends itself to. Flexibility, scalability, and cost effectiveness are the some of the avowed benefits.

Again, it’s asking enterprises to reevaluate the perception of ownership and, well, practicality. “If you purchase a PC or laptop, it becomes an asset and you will need people (to look after it). There’s obviously additional cost in maintaining equipment,” Ngan says.

The Lenovo country head says that this essentially is about rolling out the customer service red carpet in a bundle of periodic maintenance check and premier support. He anticipates that the time will come when every product coming out of the Lenovo factory will come bundled with premier support.

XaaS is about addressing pain points, and Lenovo Philippines is willing to go the extra mile to alleviate these. He underscores, “we can even help with asset tagging before deployment – for a nominal fee.” And consistent with Lenovo’s environmental thrust, the company can even assist with the disposal of units at the end of their service life. There’s also an additional obvious benefit for subscriber enterprises: nixing the need for hiring additional IT personnel.