Four-minute read

When planning a return to the office, there are two important considerations: your employees’ health and safety and their technology needs.

Whether embracing an entirely remote workforce, implementing a total return to the office space, or considering a hybrid model, organizations must ensure that all workers are safe and have access to updated hardware and technologies.

Our top recommendation to meet these needs? Hardware as a Service (HaaS). This model is the ideal way to deliver for your teams while streamlining all business functions when returning to the office.

Here are our top three reasons why:

Certainty in uncertain times

Managing technology needs in a socially distanced workspace has been one of the biggest hurdles for chief executives. In these uncertain times, a HaaS plan can provide peace of mind when it comes to keeping your organization’s technology operational and secure.

With a fixed monthly fee, business leaders can manage their expenses without unexpected costs related to hardware maintenance. This is a tremendous advantage for enterprises planning return-to-work strategies where they may need to factor in changing operational and technology needs.

As the service provider is responsible for monitoring and managing equipment, less time and money is wasted on hardware upgrades. Business leaders can focus on other priorities, like keeping their employees safe and increasing productivity.

Ensuring data and network security

With more people working from home, companies are more vulnerable to security risks. Luckily, under the HaaS model, the managed service provider will ensure that hardware is updated regularly. This includes servicing equipment, updating licensing agreements, installing security software, and providing backup and recovery solutions.

Security software updates are crucial – every day cyberattacks become more sophisticated and equipment becomes increasingly susceptible to compromise. Your MSP will ensure that essential security software, like antivirus and data security, is implemented and updated.

Backup and recovery solutions are another integral aspect of your asset security. When employees use their own devices for work, you are relying on them to secure their personal internal or external hard drives to protect sensitive organizational data – the consequences if a cyberattack is successful are drastic. Instead, the HaaS model allows you to take advantage of your MSP’s high-grade backup and recovery solutions.

Cloud services are one such high-grade solution that is a massive benefit of HaaS. Your MSP provider likely offers several top-class private cloud solutions, all of which will protect your data far better than personal clouds. Unlike personal clouds, most MSP cloud offerings include:

High availability: seamless failover if one of your business-critical servers fails, allowing you to continuously enjoy immediate access to your data.

High security: all of the best virtual and physical security measures guard your data and are updated often.

Scalability: easily increase or decrease your virtual environment as your needs change.

Redundancy: multiple backups across several locations so your data is always safe and accessible.

Cloud sync: when enabled, you can automatically sync data across devices.

Scale according to your business needs

The pandemic has forced organizations to rethink their office spaces, and bringing employees back to work involves careful planning that may require companies to scale up or down, depending on their operational and employee requirements.

A HaaS model has built-in scalability, allowing you to add, remove, and replace hardware as your organization’s needs change, providing the best solution for companies returning to the office.

Moreover, a really valuable HaaS program will also offer hot-swapping: for a defined number of years, the MSP will replace or add any components to your hardware without stopping, shutting down, or rebooting the system. As organizations return to the office, this service is critical. The functioning of businesses moving forward is somewhat fuzzy and having the reliability and flexibility of hot-swapping is necessary.

Choosing a HaaS Provider

designDATA offers rugged, modern hardware that caters to your organization’s unique requirements. With recently upgraded HaaS services, we have five equipment profiles with upgrades and customization options for each. We would love to help ease your transition back to the office in any way.