There are many compelling reasons to modernize VDI, and it’s great to hear these validated by our customers. I spoke with one of our newest customers recently for a debrief of their experience implementing Workspot Cloud PCs and workstations. Their story has a familiar tune. “Our VDI solution was not scalable. I was just so frustrated with it.” They suffered through management, scalability and poor performance pain because there weren’t any alternatives at that time. We reinvented VDI as a SaaS service to address that pain. Schedule a demo to see it in action!
Discovery
In the early days of the company they would have to take a USB drive with all the project data to a job site and upload it. To resolve that situation, they implemented on-premises VDI which helped by connecting the virtual machine to the project data, but the time it took to deploy was significant, and they also realized that the ongoing management overhead for the on-prem solution was going to be very resource-intensive..
It was at an industry conference that they were introduced to Workspot, and while they were impressed with the solution at that time, they had just implemented the on-premises solution, so making another change was going to be difficult given the recent infrastructure investment. However, the company was growing and adding personnel in multiple geographies around the world, and unfortunately the limitations of their on-prem solution were already showing. Not only was it difficult to scale, but anyone remote from the VMs experienced latency that reduced productivity.
Fast-forward a couple of years from that conference and it had became clear that the agility and productivity constraints of the on-premises VDI solution was slowing their business growth. it just could not keep up. They began rethinking their end user computing approach and reconnected with Workspot.
Implementation
As they sought to modernize VDI, the company had three primary objectives in addition to simplifying IT: Expand their talent pool globally, deliver better performance to their CAD power users, and eliminate business continuity vulnerabilities. Of course, security and IP protection is always top of mind.
“Workspot was a breath of fresh air. I didn’t have to get my hands dirty, ” says the project lead. The team appreciated the professionalism and expertise of Workspot’s Customer Success team and how they made deploying the solution so easy. “There was a very clear model for the implementation process and who was responsible for what, and that’s very important.”
Because the SaaS platform is so easy to manage, the company has created a new career path; entry-level IT people can become Workspot admins, spin up new Cloud PCs and easily support their end users. “We are creating new positions in IT and people are happier.”
Achieving Solution Objectives
There is no question that Workspot’s SaaS Cloud PC platform has eliminated complexity for enduser computing. IT can spin up new Cloud PCs anywhere in the world in a few minutes, and people can be productive immediately on their Cloud PCs and workstations. There’s no learning curve; people interact with their applications just as they always have.
Hire people anywhere – The firm has achieved their objective of being able to hire the best talent anywhere in the world. With Cloud PCs, it’s irrelevant where people live and work, which makes it much easier to find the right specialized skills for the job. Cloud PCs also bring greater consistency because IT can specify and control what data and applications are accessible based on a person’s role in the company. This standardization enables “follow the sun” productivity, while also better securing IP.
Performance – With Workspot, latency is no longer an issue. Cloud PCs and workstations are deployed close to the person and close to the data. It’s that tight coupling of all three, enabled by public cloud ubiquity, that delivers outstanding performance that delights even the most demanding power users.
Business continuity – Prior to Workspot, the IT team was very concerned about the lack of redundancy for their virtual desktops, because if a VM goes down, it’s very costly, both in terms of troubleshooting and lost productivity. The company has strengthened their ability to avoid business disruption with Workspot’s industry-leading 99.95% reliability, day in and day out. In addition, innovative BC/DR features, including both intra- and inter-cloud region failover, plus standby Cloud PCs that activate with a single click in a disaster, are all elements of a strong business continuity plan.
Support
“When you build VDI on your own, it’s very difficult to know where to go for support and the vendor is not always responsive. With Workspot, we’re not having to deal with updating VMs, patching systems or troubleshooting infrastructure – we rely on Workspot for that.” When customers do have questions Workspot support is widely known for its responsiveness and expertise.
What’s Next
For this company, implementing and managing the Workspot solution was the easiest part of the project. The biggest challenge? Evangelizing the solution internally. Change is always viewed skeptically, and especially when engineers and other power users are faced with separation from their high-end workstations. However, we’ve heard it over and over: Once they try Workspot and experience the amazing performance and the freedom of using a lightweight end point, there is no going back!
Ready to learn more? Schedule a demo and we’ll show you how easy it is to simplify end user computing in your organization.
