Lenovo joining the DaaS party

Lenovo is on the brink of launching its DaaS offering to the channel as it looks to hand partners another approach that should appeal to SME customers.

The Desktop as a Service model has been growing in popularity with some of Lenovo's hardware vendor rivals pushing the approach fairly heavily over the past year.

Three years ago around 1% of PCs were delivered via a DaaS approach but IDC is expecting that to hit around 15% by the end of next year. The shift from Windows 7 to 10 is also giving users the moment to pause for thought and re-evaluate how they pay for their hardware.

Lenovo is about to join the DaaS party, having taken some time to ensure that it has an offering that ticks all of the channel and customer boxes.

Jane Ashworth, director of channel & SMB at Lenovo, said that the DaaS service would be coming in its fiscal Q2, which starts next month.

"We are just about to launch our DaaS subscription model. There has been a lot of talk in the channel about DaaS in the channel in the last 12 to 24 months," she added "We wanted to develop an agile system that was right for SMB and to do that you can't tweak a large DaaS managed service model and try to fit a square peg in a round hole."

"We bought our UK resellers together to listen to them and ask what works for them and what are they hearing from their customers and what do they need to deliver? And we have built a DaaS model based on that UK partner feedback," she added.

Ashworth added that it was important that the vendor took steps to arm its channel with DaaS because the market landscape was changing.

"We have a legacy of selling client devices in this industry what is important, and we are putting a lot of focus around this in our partnerships, is how do we move from a box shifting to a solution selling model? That relies very much on Lenovo adequately supporting our partners with the right tools and education to allow them to have the confidence to be able to do that," she said.

"Partners are moving more towards a consultancy approach and we are trying to push that forward with partners and we have new product areas we are launching as well and to be successful it is fundamental that sales people at those resellers move to that way of selling," she added.