Hot on the heels of its announcement of the HP Managed Print Flex Program last month, HP has introduced another managed services offering tailored to customers with a hybrid workforce. But this one has a twist. With the HP Work from Home program, customers can include HP PC hardware and maintenance in the mix. That puts printing and computing devices, along with associated support and services, on one monthly bill in a program designed to meet the evolving needs of enterprises and their hybrid workforces. The goal is to deliver the right devices and supplies to each employee’s doorstep, while enabling remote and hybrid workers to be as connected and secure as possible.
Launching today in the US (followed by other countries this year and into 2022), HP Work from Home includes a range of products and services in four different bundles: Essential, Print, Compute, and Full Stack. The offerings include a curated selection of PCs and printers delivered to employees’ homes, next-business-day onsite service for support issues that cannot be solved remotely, and the HP Smart App for extending device functionality and control to mobile devices.
Each service level includes the cloud-based HP Proactive Insights service to monitor and optimize devices under management. The platform provides data and analytics centered around device and application performance, along with the ability for IT personnel to quickly survey end users on their experience with IT matters via a convenient pop-up window on the user’s desktop (as opposed to an email survey link, which is easy to ignore). The Print and Full Stack bundles also add the HP Print Flexworker managed service, which includes automatic supplies replenishment (delivered to the employee’s home, of course) and tools that give IT personnel a unified view of home and office-based print devices that are under management.
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| The HP Work from Home lineup includes four different levels of services |
On the security front, all PC and print devices in the program feature HP’s always-on, hardware-enforced device protection above and below the OS level. These features include HP Secure Boot (which ensures that the BIOS code is unmolested before boot-up), code-signing validation for all firmware, and write-protected memory spaces for BIOS-level code. HP Proactive Insights also figures into the security picture, delivering alerts to IT personnel for print devices whose security configuration is out of compliance with desired settings or devices that have failed to report their status—a crucial feature when managing devices that are not in the office.
Our Take
HP is clearly taking the lead when it comes to managed device services aimed at remote and hybrid workforces. If we have any criticism, it is that HP may now have jumped the shark when it comes to the number of managed services programs it offers—especially considering its HP enterprise direct, HP partner, and HP direct-to-consumer programs. Choice is great, but the downside is that HP customers may have trouble discerning which is the right program for them.
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