Companies are increasingly opting for a device-as-a-service model

With the rise of digital transformation, software-as-a-service (SaaS) along with many other iterations have exploded in popularity.

In 2021, the SaaS market was estimated to be worth approximately $152bn and is expected to reach $208bn by 2023.

SaaS offerings usually work through subscription or pay-as-you-go models, and can be particularly beneficial for smaller companies that want to avoid having too many products on premises to store and manage. It also allows them to ‘buy in’ services they don’t have the capacity or the resources to build or supply themselves.

Within the as-a-service space, something else is gaining traction: device-as-a-service, or DaaS.

According to Accenture, DaaS is emerging as a “highly desirable option for both customers and providers”.

Similar to SaaS, the DaaS model offers devices such as PCs, smartphones and other computing devices as a paid subscription service. This can ease the IT needs of a company by outsourcing hardware, software and device management to an external provider.

Accenture found that no PC manufacturers were offering DaaS as an option in 2015, but this jumped to 65pc by 2019.

HP Ireland’s country manager, Neil Dover, said that clients are increasingly opting for a DaaS model. HP’s own DaaS offering of managed print services enables customers to “reduce their carbon footprint by extending fleet life and HP’s end-of-lifecycle take-back programmes”, he added.

“Initiatives such as HP Device Recovery are integral to HP’s commitment to achieve 75pc circularity for HP products and packaging by 2030.”

Dover added that HP’s managed print services utilise the company’s sustainable impact reporting and analytics (SIRA) platform.

“SIRA tracks the performance of HP’s fleet in real time and unlocks optimisation opportunities. With data from SIRA, you will get actionable insight into how you can take immediate steps towards lowering your carbon emissions,” he said.

Challenges to DaaS model

While there are benefits to opting for a DaaS model, Dover said a lack of budget and buy-in from management are two main reasons companies can be hesitant to adopt this kind of transformation.

“Experience dictates that the rewards always outweigh any budgetary factors. We have observed this particularly in healthcare where, for example, the digitisation of paper patient records frees up the storage space to create additional patient treatment capacity, positively impacting waitlists,” he said.

And while the SaaS market continues to grow, it also comes with a cybersecurity risk. Bringing any third-party vendor into your business through software or hardware essentially adds another door through which bad actors can enter.

For example, last year saw a cyberattack hit software supplier Kaseya, which then affected around 1,500 businesses.

HP’s Dover said cybercriminals have become more sophisticated and often have their sights set on endpoints such as laptops, desktops and printers.

“Traditional antivirus is important, but it relies on recognising known malware or suspicious patterns, which may not be enough to defeat new or very sophisticated malware attacks,” he said.

“Any digital transformation strategy is incomplete without security to protect all endpoints.”

Reporting: Silicon Republic