How AI is turning hardware into a subscription service

For most of business history, buying technology meant owning it. Capital was set aside, servers and laptops were hauled into the building alongside the software licences, and the business then sweated those assets for as long as it practically could.
In the age of AI, that logic is starting to break. Kit bought today can be obsolete in two or three years, chips are in short supply and the companies pulling ahead are no longer those that own the most but those that can adapt the fastest.
In this episode of TCS+, Shane van der Merwe, head of technology finance at Merchant West, explains why the shift from owning technology to simply accessing it is gathering pace.
Van der Merwe unpacks:
• What is driving businesses to let go of owning their technology stack;
• Why hardware — the physical "tin" — has been the last thing to move to a subscription model, long after software did;
• Whether this is a corporate trend only, or whether cash-conscious SMEs are moving too;
• How the rise of AI is accelerating the move away from owned kit;
• The global chip-supply squeeze, and the tiering that can leave South Africa further back in the queue;
• Whether being in the cloud is a competitive advantage in itself;
• What obsolescence really costs a business, even on equipment that is already "paid off";
• How the shift from capex to opex changes the balance sheet — and what happens to the IT team;
• What a Merchant West solution looks like end to end, including how Popia-compliant data destruction is handled when old kit is returned;
• The circular-economy angle, in which returned devices are given a second life rather than being scrapped; and
• How getting this right frees up cash and keeps a business competitive in its core operations, not just its IT.
Don't miss the discussion.
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