Like any other enterprise, financial services institutions need IT solutions that prepare them to respond to business dynamics more quickly and effectively, make better use of IT resources, and bringing them closer to their customers. At the same time, these organizations operate in a very strict regulatory environment, so security and compliance are paramount. Fortunately, the right cloud PC solution addresses all these needs.
In the last few weeks we’ve spoken with several financial services firms that have decided they need to move away from their on-premises VDI solutions. The architectures for legacy solutions limit scalability and reliability – the very capabilities these organizations need to be agile – and many firms are giving up the struggle to make these systems work for them. Many are discovering that moving desktop workloads to the public cloud is the answer. Here are the key takeaways from those recent engagements.
Key Requirements for Financial Services Firms
Reliability
Many of our customers talk with us about the reliability problems they have with legacy VDI. It’s a common theme. These solutions are very complex, and over the years “features” have been added and third party tools integrated to compensate for overall solution shortcomings; this adds to the complexity and risk in these solutions. There’s day-to-day troubleshooting that occurs when users can’t connect to their virtual desktops or when performance is particularly slow, typically involving valuable and expensive IT people to try to sort out. It gets really dicey when the VDI solution needs to be updated, because there are so many moving parts that upgrading one element can take another system element down. Since these outdated architectures tightly couple the Control and Data planes, if one component fails it usually means everything fails. Your users are just out of luck, productivity plummets, and it can cost the firm millions of dollars for every hour of downtime.
A modern, cloud PC architecture is constructed very differently, and reliability is one of the major payoffs. Workspot is the only enterprise-ready, turnkey cloud PC solution with a cloud-native architecture specifically built to be more reliable than all of its predecessors and contemporaries.
Security
Most financial services firms turned to the original VDI solutions to better secure highly sensitive information. Centralizing apps and data in a data center meant that data could be better controlled, rather than residing on innumerable end points that were at risk for loss and theft. However, despite better security, on-prem VDI typically results in poor performance for remote users, and difficulty scaling the VDI solution, such as when a merger or acquisition occurs and the business environment suddenly changes. Financial services IT leaders have struggled with these trade-offs for years; now they can move beyond those challenges and make better use of IT resources.
By moving off of complex, on-premises VDI, financial services firms not only strengthen their security posture, but they’re able to deliver a level of performance to end users – no matter where they are – that has not been possible previously. Additionally, the massive scale of the public cloud and the unique ability of Workspot’s cloud PC solution to scale across multiple cloud regions in minutes, means that your organization can respond faster as the business environment changes to gain a greater competitive advantage. Today, there’s no need to trade performance and scalability for security. Workspot fortifies your Zero Trust Security policy.
Performance
End users have been complaining about VDI performance for more than a decade, ever since it was initially deployed. If you’re unlucky enough to be remote from the data center where your virtual desktop lives, you’re going to feel that pain. This goes back to the trade off we discussed before; IT teams have been forced to make hard decisions because of security and compliance requirements. Unfortunately, while it may have become more secure, many businesses also became less productive. No more tradeoffs!
Your organization can be more secure, ready to scale in minutes to accommodate new opportunities, and it can enjoy even greater productivity, even for employees and contractors who work from home. Workspot places cloud desktops and GPU workstations in the cloud region closest to the end-user for a low-latency experience that delivers the performance they’ll love.
Top Use Cases for Financial Services Firms
Call Centers
Call center personnel typically require secure access to a small number of applications to perform their jobs. This use case is particularly well-suited to non-persistent cloud desktops, and no matter where these people are located in the world, their proximity to a public cloud region means they will enjoy great performance that boosts productivity.
Remote Developers
Many Financial Services firms develop applications in-house to serve their customers. The code that is written is intellectual property that must be protected. To ensure that developers anywhere in the world can securely access the data they need, cloud desktops and workstations are a perfect fit. Learn more.
Financial Modeling
Financial analysts using sophisticated applications for creating complex models often require GPU workstations. Providing a cloud GPU workstation instead of a physical workstation delivers many benefits including the flexibility to work anywhere, more robust security by storing sensitive data in the cloud, and avoiding endless hardware refresh cycles since analysts and traders will have the most up-to-date technology available in the cloud.
Asset Management
Asset management is highly regulated and requires maximum security to protect client information. Our customers realize that the public cloud providers are better at securing data than their in-house IT teams are. When coupled with Workspot’s innovative architecture for securing cloud PCs, the result is the toughest security available.
Data Scientists
Data scientists might be the most under-celebrated role in the financial services world, but they are at the core of providing great results to clients. Providing them with the latest computing technology is critically important because of the complex work they do gathering and interpreting data. There’s no time for slow VDI performance that could give away a competitive advantage. Cloud desktops and workstations deliver the horsepower these valuable people need to perform their work quickly and thoroughly, while also freeing them to work remotely.
Next Step: Understand Your Options
Is your firm ready to make the shift from legacy VDI and physical PCs? Workspot is delivering outstanding results to our financial services customers. Schedule a demo and let’s explore your unique requirements.
