Microsoft today revealed new initiatives aimed at boosting the appeal of its Surface tablets for large enterprises and other organizations. Surface Enterprise Initiative adds an enterprise warranty offer and a business device trade-in program to accelerate adoption of Surface and Windows 10.

Beginning early in 2016, Microsoft will introduce Microsoft Complete for Enterprise – a new enterprise warranty and service offering available to Surface customers via our commercial resellers. The new enterprise warranty offering includes four elements:

• Ability to pool warranty claims by company versus individual devices Allowing for warranty claims against non-bootable devices – helpful when users 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.
• Microsoft will assist IT staff to get setup with warranty and support processes as well as provide online training for their employees.

Microsoft also announced the Business Device Trade-in Program. With 24 hour quotes, prepaid shipping labels and secure data wipe, businesses can trade their used business laptops, tablets, and phones for credit towards the purchase of new Surface devices. This offer will be available in the coming weeks to Microsoft's customers based in the U.S. and Canada, as well as Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. In the coming weeks the offer will also be available in Australia, France, Germany and the UK.

Microsoft also announced that it has more than 5,000 resellers lined up to sell the Surface to customers in 30 markets.

On top of all that news, Microsoft already has 13 organizations lined up to purchase large orders of Surface Pro 4 tablets for various uses. They include Land O' Lakes and Berkshire Hathaway Automotive.