Dell Enhances PC as a Service with AirWatch

One of Dell EMC’s new consumption models – PC as a Service (PCaaS), announced in May at Dell EMC World – has a goal of making it easy to buy and manage combined hardware, software, life-cycle services and financing as an all-one solution with a predictable payment. On Tuesday, the vendor announced enhancements to the PCaaS offering, including integrations with AirWatch, flexible financing, and the addition of asset recovery and recycling.

More specifically, the vendor said it is offering PCaaS services-delivery manager to look over the life cycle of PCaaS. The manager is a single point of contact for the customer’s PC life cycle; there are new plug-in management options as part of an integration with AirWatch into the Dell Client Command Suite; finance options that flex with the number of devices a customer needs during the contract period; and end-of-life device services. 

Dell EMC’s John Moody

“In my mind, PC as a service isn’t just about selecting the technology, but it’s also a discussion about how you intend to deploy it, how you intend to configure it, how you intend to make sure the right software is loaded – including encryption and security – … and in this case, provisioning policy and managing as in AirWatch,” John Moody, vice president global client support and deployment services at Dell EMC, told us. After that come considerations about support as well as asset recovery and recycling. 

A key part ofTuesday’s PCaaS news is the introduction of zero-touch Windows 10 Provisioning by AirWatch, as well as, integrations of AirWatch into Dell Client Command Suite for cloud management. According to Dell EMC, these two solutions give organizations a choice in how to simplify and streamline PC management with the option of a full-service solution for procuring, deploying and managing PCs, or a self-service option. 

Dell EMC touts flexible financing that allows companies to “flex up” or “flex down, ”increase or decrease the number of devices and/or upgrade PCs by mid-term by up to 5,10 or 15 percent within 36- and 48-month term options.

“This gives customers the ability to increase or decrease the number of units without restructuring everything,” Moody said. The vendor also offers custom leases and has a wide latitude of flexibility on those contracts, he added. 

Mid-term upgrades were driven by customer demand to be more flexible and offer the ability to get new technology as it’s released; or, to accommodate high-use workstation users with heavier load software with the latest technology to keep them efficient. 

The vendor has also expanded the software options available for PCaaS customers to help protect, secure and manage their investment. The new options include Dell Endpoint Security Suite Enterprise for file-based data encryption and advanced threat prevention in one suite; VMware AirWatch for unified endpoint management of Absolute Data and Device Security for asset tracking and adaptive endpoint security. 

Also included in the standard PCaaS offer is the ProDeploy Client Suite and the ProSupport suite for PCs and tablets. 

Dell offers PCaaS directly and through partners.

“For most of our partners, PCaaS means that we can provide them a very flexible per seat/per month, pre-financed [and] deliverable that they can resell very easily,” said Moody.