Should you had been rating probably the most revolutionary expertise merchandise of the previous quarter century, the fashionable PC must be at or close to the highest of the record.
Early on, PCs had been playthings for the technically inclined earlier than companies adopted them for productiveness and office duties. Persevering with evolution and numerous revolutionary developments helped deliver fashionable PCs to the place they’re at the moment: dependable, reasonably priced, simple to make use of units which can be extra akin to dwelling home equipment than they’re to early private computer systems.
Can the instance of contemporary PCs be utilized to different applied sciences? Definitely. In actual fact, that very level is central to the brand new Lenovo Turnkey Options that the corporate’s Options and Companies Group (SSG) launched lately on the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo. Let’s contemplate the brand new choices extra carefully.
The issue with enterprise options
Discovering and selecting IT options to greatest assist enterprise processes and industry-specific workloads is a unbroken problem for a lot of organizations.
Why so? First, due to the sheer complexity of the method which requires finding out quite a few distributors’ technical, product and pricing particulars, in addition to these of their chosen companions.
Subsequent is figuring out configuration and deployment necessities, together with what may be dealt with in-house and what requires professional help. Lastly, comes administration and upkeep plans, and hoping that the alternatives you make coincide with future occasions and unexpected emergencies.
How would this course of change if, as a substitute, a vendor provided prospects a easy guidelines protecting {hardware}, software program and repair necessities, then shortly delivered options based mostly on these specs? What could be completely different if, as a substitute of numerous efficiency and technical choices, the seller and its companions examined and validated options in order that they carried out as promised out of the field? How would prospects profit if, as a substitute of being introduced a protracted record of contacts required for numerous {hardware}, software program and peripheral points, they got a single contact for solutions to all technical assist questions?
In different phrases, how would enterprise prospects and the acquisition course of profit if buying options had been so simple as shopping for a PC?
Lenovo’s new Turnkey Options
That’s the query that Lenovo SSG intends to reply with the corporate’s Turnkey Options. The six preliminary choices fall into three teams:
- Immersive
- Immersive Schooling: All-in-one digital actuality (VR) options for schooling
- Immersive Design and Engineering: Options supporting photorealistic picture high quality for superior design processes with community participation
- Objective-Constructed Infrastructure
- Backup and Restoration: Enterprise-class backup and restoration and software-defined secondary knowledge storage options
- Seismic Modeling and Geotechnical Computing: Excessive-performance digital workstation options that allow accelerated geotechnical workflows
- Office Productiveness
- SMB Workplace in a Field: Proper-sized options supporting workplace infrastructures for small- to medium-sized companies
- Cellular Workforce: Options enabling workers to entry company functions and knowledge from wherever, on any gadget
As well as, the corporate is offering instruments to ease and streamline decision-making for answer acquisition and assist:
- Turnkey Resolution Builder: A simplified web-based questionnaire that helps prospects quickly decide really useful {hardware}, software program and repair configurations for particular options and use instances
- Turnkey Resolution Help: A “single level of contact” for technical assist to deal with prospects’ questions on {hardware}, software program and companies associated to Lenovo Turnkey Options
Per Lenovo’s current Every thing-as-a-Service announcement, companies may have the choice to buy Turnkey Options as-a-service, paying on a month-to-month contract or to purchase them outright with a single one-time cost.
In essence, Lenovo’s new Turnkey Options are designed to make the acquisition, possession and assist of complicated enterprise IT options as easy, predictable, dependable and cost-effective as shopping for PCs.
Closing evaluation
So how do Lenovo’s new choices stack-up towards its goals? Very nicely, for a number of causes. First, because the longtime chief in worldwide PC gross sales, the corporate is aware of loads about how simplifying complicated configuration, buying and assist processes can improve consumer engagements and buyer satisfaction. Using “easy as shopping for a PC” ideas to complicated enterprise options could be fairly a stretch for a lot of and even most distributors however not for Lenovo.
Second, the corporate has one of many broadest portfolios of any end-to-end options vendor. Its enterprise {hardware} merchandise vary from good telephones to tablets to level of gross sales (POS) units to laptops and desktops to transportable and glued workstations to servers, storage arrays, networking gear, HCI home equipment and supercomputers.
In different phrases, when Lenovo claims to have the ability to supply options supporting excessive efficiency, extremely technical or “accessible from wherever” necessities, it has the products to back-up these claims. Clearly, not all of its formidable {hardware} arsenal is being utilized to the half dozen preliminary Turnkey Options, however it’s price contemplating how different Lenovo improvements is perhaps employed sooner or later.
Lastly, it’s price contemplating how Lenovo’s strategic partnerships will impression its Turnkey Options. The corporate’s historical past of efficient strategic partnering is one thing I’ve mentioned quite a few instances prior to now. Working with and gaining the expertise and experience of revolutionary companions has helped Lenovo quickly entry new enterprise alternatives whereas minimizing threat and maximizing worth to its prospects and channel. Total, it appears extremely probably that strategic companions will play main, persevering with roles as Lenovo’s Turnkey Options portfolio matures and grows.
Whereas it’s unattainable to forecast the potential impression or potential success of recent options and techniques, the bodily items, sensible design and partnerships required for Lenovo Turnkey Options all seem like in place and aligned. That portends nicely for Lenovo itself and for its 1000’s of enterprise prospects.
