Microsoft’s Surface line up didn’t start too well a few years back, but fast forward to 2015, and you’ll find out that it’s one of the best Windows-based 2-in-1 tablets available in the market. It’s not just for users, but boosts mobility and productivity for enterprise users as well as a number of other institutions.
Earlier this month, the company introduced the new Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book at a press event, and now Microsoft has announced that it’s the fastest adopted Surface for businesses. Over the past few years, Microsoft has tried to expand the availability of the tablet through resellers across the globe, especially for business customers. Interested companies can get it from a “network of business resellers now numbers around 5,000 across the 30 global markets where Surface is available to our business customers.”
As a part of their Surface Enterprise initiative, the company announced in September that Dell and HP will resell the Surface tablets and offer enterprise-grade support for it. Now, the company has revealed two more programs being added to the initiative to make it easier for the enterprise customers to purchase the tablets: a warranty program and a business trade-in program.
The Warranty program:
The company revealed that it will introduce “Microsoft Complete for Enterprise” in early 2016, which is basically a new enterprise warranty and service offering available to Surface customers through commercial resellers. Here are some main elements of the new warranty program:
- Ability to pool warranty claims by company versus individual devices
- Allowing for warranty claims against non-bootable devices – helpful when customers have data security policies that either require a device to be wiped of all confidential information or require destruction of the hard drive prior to the device being returned under the warranty
- Next day air in the U.S. for fastest possible device replacement, and a similar rapid replace processing for markets outside the U.S.
- An on-boarding center to ensure a premium experience within the first 30 days for both IT and end users – Microsoft will assist IT staff to get setup with warranty and support processes as well as provide online training for their employees to get productive as fast as possible.
The Business trade-in program:
Coming over to the more interesting bits, Microsoft has also announced a business trade-in program. We all know that replacing the hardware in an organization can be an expensive task, especially when you have to employ tablets like the Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book. So, in order to meet the requirements of the users who are willing to upgrade to Surface Pro 4, Microsoft is offering a promotion where businesses can trade their their used business laptops, tablets, and phones for credit which can be utilized to purchase the new Surface devices.
This offer will be available in the coming weeks for customers in the United States, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, the UK, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
With 24 hour quotes, prepaid shipping labels and secure data wipe, business customers can trade their used business laptops, tablets, and phones for credit towards the purchase of new Surface devices.
If you’re interested, more details are available for the upcoming program. This will definitely help businesses to replace their existing equipment and invest slightly less, depending on the credit they receive on their existing devices.
