Larry Keating, the president and CEO of Canadian-based No Panic Computing (NPC), is trying to revolutionize the way notebooks are purchased by small business professionals with his notebook-as-a-service model.
With partnerships with HP, Intel and Iron Mountain, along with Harry Zarek of Compugen as the company's investment partner, NPC aims to deliver professionals with a fully encrypted, worry-free notebook computing experience that includes hardware, software, services and backup, all for CAN$129.99 fixed monthly cost on a lease term of 36 months.
While NPC has been available previously across Canada and the US, the notebooks that were offered were not HP branded systems. NPC is a wholly-owned company of Keating Technologies, but is run independently. Keating said NPC recently struck an exclusive partnership with HP, where only HP's notebooks are now being offered with this service. The company is announcing its new NPC service next Tuesday during its launch which is set to take place in Toronto.
NPC is available with one of two HP Compaq business notebooks that run on Intel's Centrino Pro processor. Users can choose between a 15.4-inch model for a more desktop-like experience, or they can select the 14.1-inch screen size.
Both NPC models, HP 8510p and HP 6910p respectively, feature a 120GB hard drive with 2GB of memory. Keating said a 12-inch notebook along with a tablet will also be added to NPC's notebook offerings this fall.
"With NPC, the notebooks are completely encrypted and backed up with Iron Mountain," Keating said. "Customer data is stored in Iron Mountain's data centers so if a notebook is ever lost, damaged or stolen, we can replace the notebook with all of the customer's data on it from the last time it was backed up to the Web."
Once customers call into NPC's 24/7 customer support center, Keating said they will flag the notebook as being lost or stolen so the notebook's built-in technology will automatically destroy the data and wipe out the drive on the notebook. Customers will then be offered a replacement unit within 48 hours of the call, with all of their data and preferences restored on a new notebook, Keating adds.
For VARs, Keating said this type of notebook delivery service presents a vast amount of customer opportunities since partners aren't just selling hardware, but they're also ensuring that the customer's data is stored and secured for three years.
"This is a foolproof system because customers will never lose their data since it's always secure," Keating said. "This makes for a sticky customer and better margins for the partner."
Keating said NPC has been designed to make it easy for partners to deploy these notebooks since they don't have to carry or manage inventory.
"We make available to the VAR a complete solution with a fully managed notebook," Keating said. "We know how challenged VARs are with hardware margins now, but with NPC, VARs can earn a commission of $300 for each notebook unit they sell."
What's even better, Keating said, is once the 36-month lease is up, partners can also make the same margins when they renew their customers for another three years.