The Solution as a Service Evolution 2021

Last year, as the pandemic forced businesses to hit the brakes, McKinsey boldly proclaimed that economic recovery would happen digitally -- irrespective of the type of business and its digital footprint. In 2021, this prediction is coming true in front of our very eyes.

Until 2019, most businesses swore by fully owned on-prem IT infrastructure to feel more in control of their data and destiny, refusing to place faith in cloud-based services too quickly. The pandemic has fundamentally shaken that belief to its core. Cloud services offer one of the speediest tickets to scalability, digitization and ultimately profitability, balancing pandemic risks with future rewards without the huge upfront investments that burn holes through their balance sheet.?

Just like businesses are expected to increasingly transform themselves digitally, some of that momentum will invariably result in driving cloud and managed services to evolve too. Solution-as-a-Service will play an important role in this cloud evolution.

What is Solution as a Service model

The concept of Solution-as-a-Service isn’t new, its references date as far back as the mid-2000s -- ever since the push towards Software-as-a-Service began.

If SaaS and PaaS are all about software-based cloud computing, DaaS and IaaS are primarily about hardware-first cloud computing models, then Sol-aaS or Solution-as-a-Service is an amalgamation of all of them. I won’t say it’s different from PaaS, DaaS or IaaS, as much as it’s a combination of all of them. A natural progression of cloud-native technologies which began with online software and apps, which slowly diversified with different types of hardware and use cases -- Sol-aaS just brings all of it together. It’s an approach that allows any cloud-based business to deploy turnkey hardware and software solutions flexibly which scale dynamically based on demand.?

Source: https://ibcworld.net/

Forget five-year plans on infrastructure investment that cost time and money, products born out of a legacy IT mindset of pre-pandemic times. Whether it’s an SMB’s company HR portal or a large enterprise workforce’s IT hardware and business channels migrating online, cloud-native services under Sol-aaS will enable all that and more.

Obviously, Sol-aaS is only as good as the technology partner who’s innovating and enabling all of it in the background (devices, infrastructure, software and services), as the world increasingly adopts a work-from-anywhere model. Lenovo is uniquely positioned to drive the industry’s Sol-aaS needs, something Yuanqing Yang, Lenovo Chairman and CEO, recently emphasized, “As we transform from a leading device maker to a global technology powerhouse, capable of solving the most challenging problems faced by our customers and the wider world, this commitment to innovation is more crucial than ever.”

Solution as a Service adoption now

The short answer to this is the pandemic, of course, which has hit the reset button on how organizations operate. Companies that don’t change quickly risk going out of business altogether, while those that are embracing emerging technologies and adopting cloud-based services (infuse agility, cut costs, time consuming infrastructure spending) are winning.

Just in the first quarter of 2021, global spending on shared cloud infrastructure jumped 11.6% to $10.3 billion, and dedicated cloud infrastructure spending jumped by 14.7% to $4.8 billion, according to IDC. A trend that’s here to stay. Last year, Lenovo’s data center business revenue grew by double digits year-over-year, significantly outperforming the market for four consecutive quarters. What may be surprising to many who consider it only a hardware OEM, Lenovo’s services, software, and solutions business grew almost 38% year-over-year in FYQ3, now accounting for roughly 8% of the company’s total revenue.

All of this points towards one overwhelming trend -- cloud-based solutions are the fastest way forward for businesses. And accelerated time to value is one of the key reasons behind it.

After DreamWorks upgraded their 22-year-old datacenter with Lenovo’s Sol-aaS, in the middle of the pandemic, the gains were instant. “You’re suddenly watching things that would take minutes or even hours to render in real time right in front of you,” said Scott Chapin, Director, Systems Engineering, DreamWorks Animation, delighted that Lenovo was able to bring a future-proof vision to life.

Reduced TCO is another proven benefit of Sol-aaS for non-core IT businesses and services like Ducati, for instance. Thanks to their partnership with Lenovo, Ducati does what it does best in the world of motorbikes and automobiles -- it doesn’t have to additionally worry about maintaining its IT infrastructure in the cloud -- which will continue to save them money for the next three years.

Simply put, because Sol-aaS is like a paid subscription to any online service, customers are saved from the hassle of micro-managing data security, infrastructure maintenance, software updates and cybersecurity risks on their own while quickly adopting modern technologies like AI, AR/VR, IOT etc. This in turn frees up their time to focus on core business transformation that drives value going forward.

How to implement Sol-aaS

Adversities aren’t without opportunities. If the pandemic threw up hundreds of challenges, then technology responded with thousands of solutions, and we’ve seen this firsthand at Lenovo.

In Japan, the pandemic forced the country to accelerate its online education rollout thrice as fast, where Lenovo had to equip and distribute 2 million laptops and tablets to school children all over Japan. Upon successful completion of the project, elementary school teacher Yoshizuka Ohta observed that Japanese school children naturally adapted to the online-based lessons. “GIGA technology helped to unleash the students’ learning potential,” he said.

Far from an isolated case, Lenovo championed virtual learning technologies around the world during the pandemic -- with commercial solutions ranging from hybrid classrooms to cybersecurity and virtual reality, Lenovo’s philanthropic efforts included hardware donations in North America and laptop donations to students in Milan and refugees in the Netherlands. From supporting public education efforts in China through e-classrooms, to addressing systemic problems in education in India by developing a student-teacher matching platform, Lenovo drove Sol-aaS to empower online education efforts like never before.

Sol-aaS allows you to modernize every function of your business as a core cloud-based service, infusing it with emerging technologies to help unlock new skill sets just like Aston Martin did in partnership with Lenovo. As Covid-19 restricted customer interactions at dealerships and in-house designers modelling future car designs, Aston Martin chose to implement a VR / XR solution to allow remote experiences to feel more immersive -- right from the drawing board all the way to closing a sale.

Focusing on flanks of your business to reimagine your business offerings as cloud-services helps as well. UCC Holdings, a major Japanese food and beverage company, seamlessly migrated their business with 2,000 remote workers -- all of which upgraded their devices to Lenovo ThinkPads -- in anticipation of Tokyo 2020 Olympics. “We see that remote connectivity is more than just a short-term response to the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Wesley Kampff, Portfolio Manager, Fraser Health Authority, one of Canada’s largest and fastest growing health authorities servicing 1.8 million people in British Columbia, revitalized their data center with Lenovo and Nutanix to ensure high-quality patient services during a province-wide lockdown.

For both UCC Holdings and Fraser Health Authority, thanks to Lenovo’s DaaS, managing your device lifecycle along with remote IT implementation has never been easier, freeing their employees’ time to boost productivity.

These are just a few examples, but their takeaways couldn’t be more clear. All of this wouldn’t have been possible without the growing acceptance and deployment of Sol-aaS, despite the pandemic disruption. Ultimately, it’s forcing businesses to reimagine their operating models and take meaningful risks on the foundation of technologies that drive innovation and growth across the business ecosystem.

All views and opinions expressed are my own.