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HP Businesses Hardware

HP Rolls Out Device-as-a-Service for PCs, Printers (eweek.com) 75

HP says it plans to provide companies with personal computers and other devices as part of a service. Corporate customers of HP's new initiative dubbed "device-as-a-service" will be able to pay a fixed monthly fee per employee for devices, eliminating the need to pay the retail cost upfront for hardware. From a report on eWeek:The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company unveiled a DaaS (device-as-a-service) initiative, one that has already been up and running with several of its clients for the last few months. As more and more millennials come into the work force, they expect to see light, fast, small, and up-to-date tools to use, because that's what they're used to, and their tools are like a badge of honor, HPI's Vice-President and General Manager of Support Services Bill Avey said. "Older employees might want bigger screen and keyboards. The point is, work tools need to fit the work force, and as workforces become more diverse, the tools must adjust fit the needs," Avey said. Otherwise, Avey said, employees will find workarounds in so-called shadow IT (using their own laptops, smartphones, tablets and applications) to get the job done -- which is always a nightmare for enterprise security professionals.
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HP Rolls Out Device-as-a-Service for PCs, Printers

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  • How is this news? Slashvertisement maybe?
  • by KingDaveRa ( 620784 ) on Friday July 01, 2016 @03:47PM (#52429469) Homepage
    Once upon a time, we called this 'leasing'. But, whatever, call it something new and pretend it's a fantastic new thing.
    • I was thinking the same thing.

      Perhaps the differentiator is that they set up and manage the devices too?

      That sounds like a whole different nightmare though.

      • by haruchai ( 17472 )

        I worked for years for a healthcare company that used Compaq / HP as their managed services provider right down to desktops & laptops (network hardware was mostly Cisco with some 3Com and Foundry ). I would rather have you all killed than suffer such a fate.

      • by Jawnn ( 445279 )

        I was thinking the same thing.

        Ditto. Now get off our lawn with your new-fangled as a service nonsense.

      • Perhaps the differentiator is that they set up and manage the devices too?

        Still a lease. Might have a service contract attached to the lease but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

    • by ewhenn ( 647989 ) on Friday July 01, 2016 @04:16PM (#52429639)
      Personally I' surprised they didn't use buzz words like "disruptive" and "paradigm".
  • How low can HP go? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) * on Friday July 01, 2016 @03:51PM (#52429497)

    Nothing like going from basically founding Silicon Valley to competing with the likes of Aaron's and Rent-A-Center!

    Just shut down, HP, you're embarrassing yourself.

  • by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Friday July 01, 2016 @03:52PM (#52429503)
    Hardware isn't expensive at all. PC's can be had for next to nothing. It's the software that costs the real $$! And considering computer hardware generally doesn't wear out, it's a no-brainer for us to buy cheap hardware, and save our IT money for good software.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Seriously, this is how the copier industry used to operate. It went under for a reason.

    Silliness...

  • In all of the organizations I worked in over my 15 year I.T. career, we were never able to defend from all of those "shadow IT" computers employees would bring from home. I mean, despite corporate policy specifying against doing that, there's just no possible way to prevent rogue Mac, Linux and Commodore 64 computers from joining secure domains and having complete access to the network.

    Thank you, HP, for saving us all!
    (insert eye roll here)
    • Thought you were serious at first with just the one line summary displaying.
      Clicked reply just to say "802.1x".... but instead I'll only chuckle.

    • While I got a chuckle out of your comment I'll just mention that you don't need to be able to get on the network in order to get sensitive corporate information on employee's devices.

      People will forward emails to their personal account or upload something to dropbox or just start work correspondence with their personal email. Happens all the time.

      The best way to fight against this is to make work machines as useable and user-friendly as possible... so there is less incentive to try to move work onto a pers

    • Re:About time... (Score:4, Informative)

      by The-Ixian ( 168184 ) on Friday July 01, 2016 @05:03PM (#52429967)

      there's just no possible way to prevent rogue Mac, Linux and Commodore 64 computers from joining secure domains and having complete access to the network

      Well, yes, actually, their is. It's called 802.1x and can provide authentication for all capable devices on the network.

      In addition, you can also use NAP to limit who can get a DHCP address.

      Or there are port level MAC filters on the switches.

      You could also firewall your servers from the LAN and use ACLs based on MAC addresses, IPs or L7 rules.

      I am sure there are more methods you could choose from, but those are the few I could thing of off the cuff.

  • by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Friday July 01, 2016 @04:08PM (#52429583) Homepage Journal

    If you see "X as a service", especially in an advert, replace X with "sodomy".

    Because you are so totally going to get fucked up the arse. And charged for it.

  • by kheldan ( 1460303 ) on Friday July 01, 2016 @04:20PM (#52429665) Journal
    Everything you have is 'rented' or 'leased', save consumables. Your house, your car, your phone, your computer, your furniture, even the clothes on your back are 'rented' or 'leased' to you for a monthly fee. I'm sure there are plenty of corporations out there that would love that world, where they have a guaranteed monthly income that is not dependent on sales, just lock everyone into lease contracts for everything they own. And, naturally, since you don't own any of it, you have zero rights to do what you want with it, and the 'owner' has 100% rights, so you have to put up with whatever their decisions are. Ads in your face 24/7/365? Keystroke logging? Tracking of viewing habits? Tracking of your location and activities? It's all in the lease agreement you had to sign in order to have even a place to live.

    Talk about your dystopian futures! All the above of course is mere fiction. It's more like something I'd expect from the world of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash than anything in the real world. But it doesn't mean that some corporate types don't have these thoughts, either..
    • Just wait for the rent a car ding and dent bs to come. Just hope they don't give a system with an 5-6 year old HDD that wears out and then you need pay the full price of a new disk + an lost of use fee.

    • It's already happening with software and electronics; it's already happening with cars (especially Teslas); it's starting to happen with everything else (i.e., everything infected with "IoT" bullshit). The DMCA and other parts of copyright law are being used as a lever to usurp actual property rights, the Uniform Commercial Code and the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. Where does it end?

      • See, I actually do know and understand everything you're saying; I just wanted someone else to say it. ;-) We have to be careful or the dystopian future I speak of will happen.
    • Karl Marx thought of it first.
    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Everything you have is 'rented' or 'leased', save consumables. Your house, your car, your phone, your computer, your furniture, even the clothes on your back are 'rented' or 'leased' to you for a monthly fee.

      You can thank millennials for that.

      Ask them - they LIKE not owning stuff. Why own a movie you'll only see once? Just pay the rental and be done with it. Ditto music - why buy music - just rent it - far better to have more songs to listen to than a few songs you really like.

      Ditto phones - why buy a phone

      • by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) *

        And I admit, I know a Gen Xer with the same attitude - he prefers digital over physical all the way because the digital only clogs small hard drives, while the physical creates clutter in the house.

        I might be in the same boat. I'd rather have my music/movies/TV shows on a relatively small server (and backed up to a couple of binders full of BD-Rs in my office desk) than sprawled across lots of shelves.

        At some point, I'd also like to digitize the books I have and thin out that collection considerably...p

  • "As more and more millennials come into the work force, they expect to see light, fast, small, and up-to-date tools to use, because that's what they're used to, and their tools are like a badge of honor," HPI's Vice-President and General Manager of Support Services Bill Avey said. "Older employees might want bigger screen and keyboards."

    I want a pony -- a small one that gets bigger as I get older.

  • Nothing new just rebranded
  • by clonehappy ( 655530 ) on Friday July 01, 2016 @06:27PM (#52430419)

    As more and more millennials come into the work force, they expect to see light, fast, small, and up-to-date tools to use, because that's what they're used to, and their tools are like a badge of honor

    Or how about they use the right tool for job, as determined by people who have actually been doing the fucking job? And how is a tool, be it a computer or airhammer or ratchet or saw a "badge of honor"? What the hell is this stuffed suit babbling about?

    Older employees might want bigger screen and keyboards

    Unless the "job" is posting on social media all day, watching cat videos, or sending pictures of your junk to strangers you meet on apps, what real work can anyone of any age or demographic actually get done on a mobile device? If your job involves creating content, code, spreadsheets, documents, really anything at all, how can you do it efficiently without a real screen and keyboard? I really doubt "millennials" or anyone else are so special that they can be productive pounding on a sheet of glass like a monkey.

  • When I read the headline I thought it said "Disaster-as-a-service".
    Even though it's been 3 years since I worked for them I think the 13 years that I did spend there could be best summed up by that phrase.

  • That will lower the cost of infecting enterprise PC for NSA: no need to craft an exploit like Stuxnet, just infect the hardware that gets shipped [theguardian.com].
  • by nuckfuts ( 690967 ) on Friday July 01, 2016 @09:16PM (#52431101)
    The new word for "rental".

"It's like deja vu all over again." -- Yogi Berra

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