Lenovo Consolidates as-a-Service Offerings with Lenovo TruScale

Lenovo has consolidated its different as-a-service offerings into Lenovo TruScale, the consumption usage and pricing program created for data center solutions. The expansion of TruScale, announced on Wednesday, brings together handheld devices, PCs, data center and edge solutions into a single program.

The new Lenovo TruScale will let partners deliver “everything-as-a-service” under one contract that emulates cloud consumption pricing. Revealed at the company’s virtual Tech World event, officials called it the next step of the “One Lenovo” strategy.

Lenovo’s Yuanqig Yang

Chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang introduced Lenovo TruScale in his opening remarks during the Tech World webcast. Yang said TruScale will now allow partners to collectively offer devices, edge systems and data center infrastructure as managed services.

“TruScale has become our corporate brand,” Yang said. “Operating as One Lenovo, we are committed to helping our customers benefit from our diversified lines of businesses from pocket to cloud, and our centralized program for customer support.”

Lenovo originally launched TruScale in 2019 to provide as-a-service, consumption-based usage and pricing for its datacenter solutions. It complimented the device as-a-service options offered by its personal systems group.

Company Reorganization

In the beginning of Lenovo’s 2022 fiscal year in April, Lenovo said it would look to have its different groups work more consistently together. As such, the company reorganized into three business: Intelligent Devices Group (IDG), Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) and its Solutions and Services Group (SSG).

“I see as-a-service as a major trend to fundamentally reshape the IT industry,” Yang said. “It turns the separate purchases of hardware, software and services into our integrated purchasing experience. It turns the separate the steps of design, deployment and operation services into our subscription based, all-inclusive model.”

Based on Lenovo’s own research and forecasts from IDC and Gartner, the company said as-a-service will encompass 12 percent of x86 server expenditures and over 50 percent of storage infrastructure spending. As-a-service also represents 17 percent of commercial PC purchases, and is growing at a 50 percent CAGR, according to Lenovo.

Supporting Partnerships

Microsoft, Nutanix, VMware, Intel, SAP and Deloitte Consulting were among those that are supporting the launch of Lenovo TruScale. Lenovo said its ThinkAgile VX HCI platform will be available with VMware Cloud Foundation through Lenovo TruScale. Likewise, Lenovo and Microsoft launched a new ThinkAgile MX HCI platform running Azure Stack, available with TruScale. Deloitte will also offer the ThinkAgile MX HCI platform with Azure Stack for customers seeking the on-premises Microsoft cloud solution.

In partnership with Intel, Lenovo TruScale is also now available with a silicon as a service option. This will let partners sell and provision compute services based on the number of cores a customer requires.

Lenovo’s Dale Aultman

“What we’re doing with TruScale is really meant to bring together some of the critical explorers that that are being driven by small and medium businesses, as well as things we’re doing at the edge,” said Dale Aultman, general manager of infrastructure solutions in Lenovo’s new SSG.

New Edge Appliances

Expanding Lenovo’s edge portfolio, the company launched two new edge solutions. Among them is the ThinkSystem SE350 Edge server, loaded with the VMware’s edge cloud software. The server provides built in networking capabilities, with support for LTE.

Lenovo also launched the ThinkEdge SE70 artificial intelligence edge platform. Developed in partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), it is designed for logistics, transportation, smart cities, retail, health care and manufacturing.

The ThinkEdge SE70 is powered by NVIDIA’s Jetson Xavier NX platform, initially delivered as an AWS Panorama machine learning appliance. Installed with the AWS Panorama device SDK, it is designed to enable enterprise applications that use computer vision. According to Lenovo, it can transform IP cameras into “smart” cameras that run computer vision applications at the edge. For example, Lenovo said it can monitor inventory on retail shelves in environments with limited bandwidth.

Enabling Managed Services

Lenovo TruScale will make it easier to deliver infrastructure as managed services, Aultman said. “Whether it’s their services or our services, partners will be able to sell the client a managed service platform, either in a consumption model, or hybrid cloud model or private cloud model,” she said.

Aultman added that Lenovo has already begun enabling partners to deliver TruScale services. One key benefit of the new program is partners can now hold the contracts for their clients, according to Aultman.

“[Partners] will own the contract, end to end,” she said. “They will be able to earn the contract from the assumption all the way through the lifecycle of in a very simple, incentive reward model, which is a lot less complex.”