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Lenovo and Nutanix roll out as-a-service hosted desktop offering
Lenovo and Nutanix’s own research indicates that customers are increasingly looking for more flexibility in workplace tools
Lenovo and Nutanix have given the channel another option to put in front of customers looking for desktop as a service (DaaS).
The timing of the as-a-service hosted desktops comes against a backdrop of significant change in the workplace tools that customers are looking for because of the experiences of the coronavirus pandemic.
Lenovo’s own recent research, Future of work and digital transformation, revealed that 83% of businesses expected workers to be remote for at least half of time even after life gets back to normal.
Reacting to that situation has led to the launch of TruScale, Lenovo’s first offering for hosted desktops with Nutanix. Customers will be able to choose a range of devices, ranging from thin clients desktop PCs to virtual desktops that will come with a choice of Citrix or other virtual desktop environments, plus ThinkAgile HX Series from Nutanix. Partners can then offer it as a managed service, with users getting a monthly price.
Lenovo is not alone in identifying the as-a-service approach as one that is increasingly appealing to customers, and joins PC rivals HP and Dell with an offer that its channel can now put in front of customers.
“Many organisations are modernising their IT infrastructures to support the growing demands remote work continues to place on their IT systems,” said Kirk Skaugen, executive vice-president of Lenovo Group and president of Infrastructure Solutions Group.
“We are seeing a shift where customers are more interested in as-a-service models to help offset the investment associated with upgrading their IT systems quickly,” he added.
For Nutanix, the partnership gives the firm an opportunity to bring its cloud and hyperconverged infrastructure expertise to bear.
“As businesses worldwide look for the way forward beyond this pandemic, they need technology partners to help them to embrace the future of work and thrive in a hybrid work model which will be the standard for many organisations,” said Tarkan Maner, chief commercial officer at Nutanix.
“Lenovo’s strategic collaboration with Nutanix provides customers an end-to-end solution – from the hybrid cloud datacentres to digital workspaces – to empower employees wherever they are, while offering businesses a simplified consumption model through Lenovo TruScale Infrastructure Services, along with increased flexibility, scalability, performance and security to navigate the challenges of a distributed workforce,” he added.
Last summer, Gartner highlighted the home-working surge as a major factor in the growth in popularity of DaaS.
The analyst house noted that last year was expected to see a 95% year-on-year (YoY) rise to $1.2bn in the slice of public cloud spending that was the result of the DaaS category.
“DaaS offers an inexpensive option for organisations that are supporting the surge of remote workers and their need to securely access enterprise applications from multiple devices and locations,” said Gartner in a research note.
The pitch from Lenovo and Nutanix
For the channel, there are a few elements of the offering that Lenovo and Nutanix are highlighting, which could help spark some interest from customers.
These include making it a managed solution that reduces up-front investment and provides users with flexibility. It also offers a chance to take the offering from a managed service provider that could add their own value wrap to the offering.
There is also the prospect for those buying TruScale for Hosted Desktops with Nutanix that there will be productivity improvements with a managed service approach freeing up administrator time.
Finally, statistics seem promising, with Lenovo claiming that it can help reduce infrastructure management costs by as much as 62%.
