In last week’s blog I talked about how one small step to the cloud (instead of a giant leap!) can make a huge difference in your business. After all, the ultimate goal of great IT innovation is business agility; IT teams should be helping their companies grow. Last week’s small step is about solving the problem of latency for remote users. When an organization has on-premises VDI, unless everyone is really close to the data center in which their virtual desktops are deployed, there is going to be latency. When remote users are far from the data center, it gets pretty ugly. You’ve heard the complaints, and if you have better things to do than field complaints about a solvable problem, it’s time to take action. You can fix it; just give them a cloud PC. You deploy cloud PCs in the Azure regions closest to these users, and they can experience performance that is even better than a physical PC! If there’s a reason you would not want to do that for them, I’d love to hear it! Maybe I can offer some information that would mitigate any concerns you have over this formula for IT heroism!
Got Power Users? Set Them Free with Cloud Workstations!
Speaking of being an IT hero brings us to the second use case I want to talk about. It’s another small step to the cloud you can take that will have a huge impact on the business.
We engage with many CIOs in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry because they have a huge problem: They need virtual desktops because of the nature of their projects, but on-premises solutions just don’t deliver the performance required for power users. We’ve heard it (and seen it) countless times. Forward-thinking CIOs try legacy VDI because they need greater flexibility and agility than physical workstations can provide, but time and again these projects fail. Similarly, organizations in manufacturing, life sciences or any industry that has design engineers manipulating 3D/4D images or visualizing massive amounts of data know that a large amount of processing power is needed to deal with resource-hungry graphics applications such as AutoCAD, Revit, SOLIDWORKS and many more. This is why design teams will often relocate when they are working on a large design project, whether it’s a new commercial airliner, a new stadium or a hospital campus – they have to be able to collaborate with other project teams in real-time. In the absence of the right technology, physical proximity to the team is essential for success. For this power-user use case, physical workstations and VDI just don’t cut it.
What if you could solve for this use case in your organization with one small step? There’d be no more need to relocate project teams, you could then hire the best talent regardless of where that person lives, you could avoid the expense of opening branch offices, designers could collaborate in real-time both within the firm and across partners in a joint venture, and they’d love you forever because you gave them the ability to work at home, at a project site, in a hotel – anywhere!
The Top 9 Growth Accelerators AEC IT Teams Can Impact
Our AEC customers have told us that addressing these nine things are key to growing the business, and you can impact every one of them with just one small step. If you replaced VDI and physical workstations with cloud GPU workstations just for your CAD and BIM users, you can completely transform the business. Our AEC customers, including Mead & Hunt, C&S Engineering, Dudek, and more, are great examples. These CIOs chose cloud workstations, which enable their firms to:
1. Win bigger projects in any location
2. Launch those projects faster
3. Participate in more joint ventures
4. Make collaboration easier
5. Hire engineers anywhere
6. Work from anywhere on any device
7. Protect IP and simplify disaster recovery
8. Drive business efficiency & continuity
9. Innovate faster
Plus, the possibilities for supporting new uses cases are very exciting too!
When you can deploy cloud workstations anywhere in the world, in minutes, across Azure regions globally, the possibilities become really exciting. The firm can bid on projects anywhere, scale up and down in minutes to meet project needs, teams can collaborate on 3D/4D models and large datasets in real-time, and power users can work anywhere. IT teams are able to make better use of their time since they no longer have to troubleshoot VDI, or provision and maintain physical workstations. Cloud workstations are always up to date, so there’s no patching, updating or maintenance. The business has overall greater agility to pursue new business, IP is better protected, and disaster recovery plans are strengthened with cloud region failover and standby cloud workstations.
You can achieve all of that, by taking one small step to address the power-user use case! That seems like time really well spent. Workspot works with you, side by side, to deploy your cloud workstations in Azure – fast. Flat rate pricing per user (including the cost of Azure and Go-Live Services) takes all of the guesswork out of cloud computing. Predictability, flexibility, agility for the business – check! Power users are freed from the constraints of the office and get better-than-workstation performance – check! IT has fewer headaches, adds tremendous value to the business, and gets to be heroes for change – check!
Ready to take a step in the right direction for your power users? Schedule a live demo and we’ll show you how it works!
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