James Xuereb
Many IT teams are trying to save time. Rolling out Microsoft Surfaces can save you a bunch of time and in the long term - money.
We often get asked what endpoint devices do we recommend. Plenty of brands get raised, and suggested in the sales process, but Surface just wins out for us time and time again. This article shares some of the lessons we've learnt over the last few of years.
If this sounds like something you are thinking about, or you have a device refresh item on your roadmap then read on.
To start
This is not a review website or Reddit article, the goal of this blog is to share some of the questions that often come up for us, from: scoping; procuring; deploying; securing; regular management; and end user feedback.
So, I asked around the corners of our Teams channels for some feedback from the various CNS techs and clients.
Endpoint device costs
I'm a big believer in "You get what you pay for".
Some other brands have on average cheaper per unit pricing but calculating ROI over the space of 3 years the time spent on troubleshooting and hardware, faults can stack up and skew the results.
Surface have a great spread in their range:
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Entry level starting from $1,208 Surface Laptop GO
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Rock solid mid-level $1500-$2000 Surface Laptop or Surface Pro
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Power hungry designers, dev's and execs can fetch all the way up from $2,800-$5000+ Surface Laptop Studio 2
Things to note on costs
Quality of parts is often overlooked when replacing in volume, but can really affect the a 3 year term ROI. Our service desk reports back that we get less little breakages with Surface compared to some of our other brands. Our Teenager Education customers really put these devices through their paces. Keyboards and hinges are one of the strengths of Surface. Depending on what industry you are in, there are special pricing deals on offer - especially for Education.
When ordering 5 or 500 or 5000, volume discounts can be made consider this with your budget timing and the partner you use for procurement.
We often get positive feedback on just how good camera's and noise filtering with the inbuilt mic are. Remote meetings are levelled up with surprising ability to handle low light levels and clarity!
Deployment
Bloatware - can often be a challenge for IT teams to manage in deployments. Surface are simple to manage and have the least amount of guff IT teams don’t need, fresh out of the box, saves time setting up, managing SOE’s and deployment processes.
Drivers - Surface drivers are the simplest of all devices to be managed with Intune or your MDM platform. e.g. typically quotes for deployments involving surface have less effort compared to other brands.
Securing every level
The latest batch of Surfaces as cover all the levels of security from Cloud, OS, Firmware bios encryption and management. The hardware itself supports Windows Hello for business & TPM 2.0 which makes for a closer login experience to your mobile.
Security teams love it and gave me far to many things to list in this article. plenty more to read on MS's official blog.
Source: Microsoft surface blog "Microsoft Surface security: Keeping you protected"
Regular management
Simple fixes what IT want. When the proverbial hits the fan you want a quick turn around replacement or fix. Microsoft have been improving their service and internal systems to turn replacement parts or devices swaps happen faster.
Like most top brands extra peace of mind with Accidental Damage Protection "ADP" - a type of insurance coverage that protects against accidental damage to a device is also something we have benefited from, especially in the Education space.
End user feedback
Mac out Windows in - Maybe a controversial statement but we this does happen and we have heard this sentiment and mandates from Education clients.
Battery life - our team and clients are often surprised how over the lifespan of 2-3 years the battery hangs onto its charge, compared to previous notebooks and tablets they’ve owned.
Built strong - Part of Microsoft's goal of being cool again is to invest on the small things like: keystroke sound and key travel; hinge strength and stiffness; and multipoint touchpads.
All of these often surprise our users and are great validations for what can sometimes be extra $$$ over some cheaper competitors. This point is often hard to translate when comparing pictures online versus tactile touch.
The education sector demands their students need real world experience. Some of the users in education have told us that Windows and Surface better equip their students for when they leave school for the modern workplace and have binned their Mac fleets.
To wrap up
If you are using Microsoft ecosystems such as M365, Intune, Intra ID or plan to in the future, Surface is really worth considering. If you are using Google Cloud Platform or AWS as your primary infrastructure and you've read this far (thanks), it is good to consider that some of the deployment wins from a Windows POV are still very relevant.
Interest is peaked but still not sure, my advice is to trial, trial and trial. Like most orgs, we often work with running a POC with some of your team, it is a great way to measure value, and in this case test the physical products.
I can only say so much, ultimately it's up to you if you think Surfaces are worth a look. If any of the points in this short article make you raise an eyebrow, write something down or scratch your head, it’s probably worth having a look over in our Surface page, or contacting us for an informal no pressure chat about what you thought was interesting.
Extra bonus link: Microsoft's official surface blog has a lot more content that could help with your research.
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