HP, Lenovo Extend PC Managed Services

Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo, the top two PC manufacturers in the world, are watching the market shift from conventional desktops and laptops to mobile devices and tablets. But that’s not making them or their customers give up on the venerable PC anytime soon, as each is launching new endpoint provisioning and managed services.

Yesterday, HP announced a partnership with LANDesk to offer remote provisioning and ongoing maintenance of desktops and laptops in business environments.

Lenovo, too, announced a similar partnership with BMC Software, through which it is leveraging the Remedy IT Service Management Suite to provide ITIL-compliant remote management and remediation services to Lenovo and its enterprise customers.

Both companies are feeling pressure to get greater performance out of their PC divisions. HP has watched its sales and market share erode since last summer’s management meltdown. Lenovo, which has actually gained market share to overtake Dell for the number two spot in PCs, is watching PC sales forecasts in emerging markets slow. Both companies are feeling the pressure from Apple’s juggernaut tablet, which outsold their combined PC portfolio in the fourth quarter.

HP’s offering with LANDesk is fairly straightforward. LANDesk Management Suite will enable the remote setup and provisioning of PCs, and give HP and its partners the ability to provide ongoing maintenance and support for a host of issues, including BIOS updates, hardware failure alerts, energy management and security.

“This collaboration brings unique capabilities to HP customers in the area of client management, end-point security and IT service management,” said Mike Hall, senior vice president of sales and marketing at LANDesk. “We look forward to the continued integration of our joint solutions.”

Lenovo, which already offered managed services for its PC users, is leveraging BMC’s Remedy to automate and optimize the service delivery process. The company says Remedy provides it the ability to scale with consistency to its customers around the world. The capabilities complement Lenovo’s existing post-deployment software maintenance services.

“Since the data from different resources could not be integrated, we faced the challenge of controlling service processes, response times and service quality,” said Lv Zaifeng, general manager of Lenovo’s service operation and support, emerging markets business group. “BMC Remedy incorporates ITIL best practices, offering incident management, problem management and change and configuration management, and improves service levels from every corner.”

HP and Lenovo are not strangers to the managed services segment. Each company works with leading managed services tool providers in the integration of remote monitoring and management tools for service delivery.

Both companies are looking to expand their value proposition through automated and remotely delivered professional services. For example, HP recently unveiled its ProCurve G8 server architecture, which includes remote monitoring and management delivered by HP. The service reaches into the server to give HP the ability to recognize failures and execute remediation. The service, delivered with and through partners, will open new revenue streams and create a different value proposition for HP and its channel.

The underlying value propositions of both initiatives are speed and cost. The service enables end users to expedite the deployment of PCs and simplify the maintenance. At the same time, these services address a growing need to augment or replace the diminishing human resources in many IT shops. By providing such services, vendors are ingraining themselves in their end-user environments.

HP and Lenovo aren’t the only vendors turning to managed services as a new business opportunity. Many vendors, including Dell, IBM, Intel and others are looking at managed services as a means to increase their value and affinity with customers. The open question is whether these services are a boon or bust for the thousands of managed service providers already delivering them.

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