At my company, to ensure that our employees would continue being productive throughout the pandemic, we gave notebook computers, Zoom accounts, and other collaboration tools to our newly remote or hybrid workers. Now it’s time to move on to the next step by fully realizing the benefits that hybrid working can bring—among them enhanced employee engagement. Our workforce is ready to move from post-crisis mode to a new way of working that better reflects the fact that flexibility in location and work style are now choices that employees often demand. This reality represents a dramatic shift from pre-COVID days. In all likelihood, your employees have the same needs and are making similar demands.

Hybrid workers have fully embraced this concept of choice. Consider these statistics from Pew Research Center: A startling 76% of a sample of almost 6,000 full-time and part-time workers said that personal preference is their major reason for working from home. Contrary to what many were saying in the early days of the pandemic, these workers tell us that improved work-life balance and productivity are benefits of being able to work remotely. Most (72%) say working from home hasn’t affected their ability to advance in their career. At the same time, 60% now feel less connected to their coworkers.

However, now that people’s COVID fears have lessened, Pew statistics indicate that some people are choosing to return to the office, at least some of the time, citing higher productivity as a major reason. Plus, about half of all workers whose companies have closed their office say they would be comfortable going on-site when their office reopens.

Looking toward the future, enterprises must adjust to managing a hybrid work environment. Many employees are making working from home a permanent part of their lives, choosing to go into the office only when necessary for personal interactions, productivity benefits, or at the request of their supervisors or teams.

Employee Experience Management

Given the immovable force of workers who are happy to be working off-site, IT, Human Resources (HR), and collaborative teams must focus on delivering a user experience that helps further improve productivity, transparently secures endpoint devices, and improves employee retention. While employees now have the ability to choose their workplace, the common denominator is that they all want to be highly productive, in whatever location they work and on the devices that best suit their work style. Enterprises have a great opportunity here to step up their game and exceed their workers’ expectations.

What would it take to deliver an exceptional employee experience? With both user experience and security top of mind, it’s no surprise that a survey of end-user computing (EUC) professionals have named the adoption of virtual-desktop infrastructure (VDI) as a top consideration following the pandemic. The other key requirement the survey identified is their organization’s ability to proactively manage users’ technology experience via DEX (Digital Employee Experience) tools. These solutions work hand-in-hand with VDI and DaaS (Desktop as a Service) platforms to ensure that users have the smoothest experience possible with very few interruptions.

VDI is, and will continue to be, the key to providing a hybrid workforce with a consistent user experience, at a level that supports high productivity. While Windows is a great operating system, managing employees’ desktop computers across an endpoint estate that’s more distributed than ever before can be complex and time-consuming. With a DaaS solution, you can move that complexity to the cloud and ensure simplicity on the desktop.

Windows in the cloud eliminates the IT headache of managing physical endpoints that need regular software updates, bug fixes, security updates, and other additions. User support, troubleshooting, and data backup are time-consuming and expensive with fully loaded physical endpoints, not to mention the decreasing lifespan of hardware in times of the constantly accelerating evolution of processor and memory technologies.

Putting Windows in the cloud is also the answer to securing the endpoint without interfering with user productivity. Complex security patching, for example, now happens in the cloud, so users no longer need to endure frustrating interruptions while waiting for their device to update. Automating security updates can also help prevent inconsistent patching—or worse, unpatched devices that can invite threats into the network.

Shifting to the cloud and DaaS model lets your hybrid workforce use their digital workspace to access individual user-profiles and the applications they need from any location. Whether your enterprise decides to use Citrix, VMware Horizon, Azure Virtual Desktop, or even Windows 365 Cloud PC, you need an operating system that can effectively and securely support digital workspaces.

Retention and Recruitment

To alleviate the problem of newly remote workers feeling less connected to their coworkers, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and other collaboration platforms have become basic, must-have tools. It’s important that we don’t forget about the human side of human resources. By working with IT to address technology issues, we can provide the necessary collaboration tools to stay in touch. HR and management must also check in with their workers regularly. People feeling that their work has value contributes greatly to employee retention. Understanding team and company goals and seeing how they can contribute to them can go a long way toward boosting employee satisfaction.

Recruitment in the time of the great resignation, or professionals’ great shift to new positions, demands that enterprises not only keep their digital workspaces up to date, but also offer recruits a highly compelling, hybrid work-from-home environment. Ease of remote onboarding—and thereby avoiding a lot of downtime—ensuring the clear communication of access protocols, and new employees’ having access to IT and HR are all musts to attract new recruits. Providing a dedicated, hybrid welcome package is a smart first step. Newer generations of recruits who are entering the workforce expect the latest in collaboration tools and a seamless technology experience. What they want to see is a hybrid workplace and a commitment to a reasonable work-life balance.

Tying It All Together

The post-pandemic world is one where organizations now trust their employees more than ever—to be productive, to know what is best for them, and to reflect their company values, without always being under the watchful eye of their supervisor. Employees have strongly stated that they are mostly happy about working remotely, so it is highly unlikely that the five-day-a-week, on-site work requirement will return.

Working remotely is a dramatic shift, but fortunately, we have technology that enables a fully productive remote workforce. It has aided us throughout the pandemic. By moving Windows off the endpoint, giving your workforce the collaboration and communication tools they need, and being super diligent in keeping up with security updates and patching, you can deliver a great user experience and ensure a productive future.

This article was written by Ben Ward End User Computing Technologist at IGEL Leeds, England, UK  and first published in UX Matters. 

The post Unleash the Power of Your Employee’s Productivity appeared first on IGEL.

VMware

VMware Horizon needs no introduction. With support for workloads that sit on vSphere (both on-premises and in the cloud) and natively in Microsoft Azure, it has been tried and trusted by the global market as one of the premier virtual app and desktop platforms. With literally millions of individual users world-wide, from critical hospital deployments and CAD engineers working on the next generation of aircraft, all the way to remote workers, VMware Horizon has been pivotal in keeping the global economy going.

Azure

The Microsoft Azure platform has grown at a phenomenal rate. By tying together all of an organization’s productivity tools with a best-of-breed IaaS platform, it is a top choice for organizations to migrate to and grow. With multiple options for deploying VMware Horizon virtual desktops and apps — including Azure VMware Solution and Azure Virtual Desktop, which includes features like multi-session Windows 10 and Windows 11 — enterprise IT teams often look to Azure as the foundation when they are tasked with innovating in the end-user computing space.

IGEL

Finally, when it comes to the endpoint, there is a choice that has been rapidly gaining market share over the past couple of years – IGEL. IGEL is one of the only purpose-built enterprise-ready OS platforms for connecting to the Digital Workspace. For organizations looking for a more secure, consistent base to connect to their workspace — whether that is DaaS, SaaS, or any mixture of applications — IGEL makes it happen.

When you bring these three solutions together, something incredible happens.

Examples from the field

Don’t take our word for it. We have plenty of examples where a joint VMware, Microsoft, and IGEL solution have delivered outstanding outcomes for our customers.

Cost Efficiency

A leading equipment manufacturer was looking to enable hybrid working for their staff. Faced with an aging PC estate and the need to move to a modern Windows OS for their applications, they selected VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure as their solution of choice.

This would give them the agility to migrate to a solution that could be deployed to not only home workers, but also those workers who needed to get to multiple remote global sites. Horizon would give them a great VDI broker with a leading protocol and industry-leading application deployment capabilities, while Azure meant that they could put this solution wherever they needed it to be without having the huge upfront cost of purchasing server hardware.

Next, they started looking at modernizing their endpoint estate. Part of their requirement was to be able to use CAD software and Microsoft Teams, and it quickly became clear that replacing thousands of desktops was going to cost a lot more than initially expected, potentially threatening the feasibility of the whole project.

At this point, the VMware account team suggested that the customer consider IGEL for repurposing their endpoint estate. Using IGEL, and leveraging VMware Horizon’s capabilities with Teams optimization and rich graphics acceleration, the vast majority of that PC estate could be retained, instead running IGEL OS rather than older versions of Windows. The combined cost savings of not having to purchase new PCs, along with the reduced power costs of running a more efficient OS and avoiding device recycling costs meant that the overall project cost was now much lower, with the entire project cost being much closer to the budget originally set aside for just replacing their PC estate.

Ease of Management

When a large airline wanted to embrace a rock-solid application delivery platform, they knew which solution they preferred to deliver it.

The solution had to be reliable and trusted, while offering an excellent end-user experience. They chose VMware Horizon on Azure VMware Solution (AVS). Selecting AVS gave them the ability to move their VMware vSphere workloads seamlessly between their on-premises datacenters and Azure and an easy mechanism to extend their private datacenter to the public cloud.

For their endpoints, again, only one solution fit the bill – IGEL. With IGEL OS and its industry-leading endpoint management solution, it was simple to build an endpoint estate that could bring disparate devices together under a single, unified management plane.

Along with this manageability, IGEL OS is built from the ground up to be a more secure and reliable platform. Real-time policy updates for endpoints both on and off the corporate LAN mean that no matter where a device is globally, or which network it’s on, full visibility and configuration management is always at hand.

Security

A ransomware attack isn’t just a one-off attack. It can take days, weeks, or in some cases months to recover data and get access back into systems. In a healthcare environment, losing access to systems for a sustained period just isn’t an option.

There have been multiple very public cases of healthcare organizations falling victim to ransomware attacks and having to cancel critical operations and procedures while they struggle to recover access to their IT systems.

One large healthcare organization decided that they simply couldn’t take the risk of losing access to their systems. They decided to be proactive and secure the biggest attack vector for ransomware attacks – their endpoints.

They chose to move their end-user workloads off their physical endpoints and into a public cloud. They selected VMware Horizon 8 on Microsoft Azure VMware Solution. If the worst did happen, they could shut down large swathes of their end-user estate and restore them from backups or rebuild them much quicker than in a standard Windows-based desktop estate.

How about the endpoints themselves though? To reduce their attack surface as much as possible, the healthcare provider selected IGEL as their endpoint platform.

The IGEL platform has been designed with security at its core. With a read-only OS, real-time configuration management, and encryption as standard, the chances of compromise are drastically reduced. Coupled with VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure, those malicious actors set on exploiting insecure environments need to look elsewhere.

Summary

With so many different end-user products in the market, it can be difficult to select technology solutions that fit together and resolve challenges across different use cases. The partnership between VMware, Microsoft, and IGEL is a solution that makes sense time and time again.

The evidence is clear. Whether you want to make your new DaaS solution financially viable, easily manage endpoints across locations and networks, or protect against threats, this combined solution has been tried and tested and is trusted by some of the world’s largest enterprises.

To learn more, visit our VMware page.

The post How VMware, IGEL, Microsoft are a Great Combination for DaaS appeared first on IGEL.

We’ve got to the stage where we no longer labor under the misapprehension that we, or the businesses we use will never be hacked. Instead, we’re into the era of damage limitation. If sensitive information is stolen, the strategy is to make it as difficult as possible to get anything useful from it via encryption, or by keeping key parts of the data separate.

There’s another type of attack though, which is much more insidious. It’s one that doesn’t aim to steal any data. Instead, is about pure blackmail. And it’s on the rise.

Ransomware on the Rise

Ransomware has a very simple plan of attack. Make a target’s data unreadable unless the target pays an arbitrary ransom to regain access. This is usually carried out via a ‘worm’ that encrypts the primary Windows system partition and any other partitions discovered. The attacker then demands payment (usually in bitcoin) to release the recovery key. It is only with this key that the infected system’s partitions can be restored and access to the data regained. Without this, the only option is to wipe each affected machine and then reinstall from backups or a fresh installation.

To most people working in IT, the name ‘WannaCry’ brings on a range of different emotions, most of them negative. In 2017, the largest ransomware attack ever to have been carried out hit organizations across the world, leading to billions of dollars of loss and damage.

Shockingly, this attack was carried out via a vulnerability that was not only known about, but that already had an available fix. The exploit used this vulnerability to tunnel into multiple Windows machines on the network, infecting them all in turn. They just had to be running unpatched versions of Windows 7 and earlier.

WannaCry exposed some huge failures in IT security for organizations globally. Approximately 200,000 machines running Windows 7 and earlier were impacted.

Among the hardest-hit victims of this attack was the UK’s National Health Service in England and Scotland. Impacted endpoints included PCs, MRI scanners and equipment in operating theaters. The attack progressed over four days, making vast swathes of critical life-and-death equipment unusable. The total cost to the NHS was £92 million.

Decreasing Presence at the Edge

Windows was and still is a core component for most of the world’s businesses. Attacks like this, though, highlight that having a large, complex operating system across multiple sites, networks and geographies can lead to a huge attack surface, no matter what mitigations are in place. There is only so much you can diminish against malicious actors, employees and network connections.

Increasingly, organizations are looking at ways to decrease their presence at the edge. With the rise in SaaS applications, VDI implementations that put Windows securely in the datacenter and the Digital Workspace, it has become less important to have a traditional operating system everywhere that application access is required.

Moving Windows to the datacenter is something that forward-thinking organizations have been doing for over 20 years. VDI keeps Windows locked in the datacenter, with all of the additional security that incorporates, including industrial firewalls, monitoring and easy update methods.

IGEL: The Operating System Purpose-Built for the Edge

The edge is increasingly becoming the preserve of purpose-built ‘edge’ operating systems, such as IGEL OS. These operating systems prize security, connectivity and application access above all else. By acting as truly stateless devices, nothing sensitive is stored locally, with everything taking place in the public and private cloud as required, with all of the additional security mentioned above.

Rather than managing herds of temperamental large operating systems which are all built slightly differently depending on the use case across departments, geographies and use cases, IGEL OS enables all endpoints to be managed as a consistent fleet, with integrations into third party tools as required.

Here’s an example of how IGEL can help:

Imagine for a second that despite all of your best efforts and security solutions, a swathe of your Windows endpoints have fallen victim to a ransomware attack and are now encrypted. How do you cope with that situation? Can you now trust your endpoints? How do you get your users productive on endpoints they can’t currently use?

This is where IGEL’s UD Pocket solution comes in. With a UD Pocket, users can get up and running with their SaaS and VDI environment on the same device they were using previously, but without using the compromised OS that’s installed on the hard drive. That’s the benefit of running a secure, containerized operating system; it abstracts from the endpoint but enables full access to all of the applications and services users need.

Wanna avoid the next WannaCry? Secure your edge.

The post Secure Your Edge! appeared first on IGEL.

So, if VDI in the cloud is not necessarily DaaS, what actually is DaaS and what’s the difference between a VDI and a DaaS solution?  

What is the difference between VDI and DaaS? 

*aaS 

At its heart, DaaS is simply a Virtual Apps & Desktops solution provided as a service from either a Managed Service Provider (MSP) or directly from a vendor. The key way to understand whether a cloud-based VDI solution is DaaS is which pieces are above and below the management ‘waterline’. This isn’t always clearly defined, and different solutions have different levels of ‘under the waterline’ management. Let’s look at some of the key features of a DaaS service. 

Architecture 

DaaS services often use a multi-tenant model. This means that all customers will be accessing logically segregated environments sitting on shared hardware. This makes more efficient use of underlying hardware and keeps costs down, but does place more requirements on the service provider to adequately manage the load on the hardware and ensure a balanced utilization of resources. 

The hardware, including servers, the operating systems and the delivery platform itself are managed by the MSP and are therefore ‘under the waterline’ and hidden from the customer. 

By contrast, a non-managed VDI deployment usually means that customers have complete control and access to all of their resources. The only contention issues experienced in this more traditional environment will be via either under-specced resources or unexpected spikes in utilization.    

Control and Access 

Traditional VDI means that customers have full control of every aspect of their implementation.  This ensures that they can keep a tight grip on application usage, system monitoring, data storage, and user permissions. With this control comes a greater ability to comply with relevant laws and regulations regarding consumer data privacy and protection, which is especially important in fields like healthcare, education, and finance. 

In a DaaS environment, the ability to configure, monitor, and store data will vary based on provider, though typically the level of control will be less that in traditional VDI deployments. Given that most DaaS environments are cloud-based, there may be more of a risk of cyberattacks. Further, not every DaaS vendor has fully adjusted their service offerings to meet common industry-specific regulatory requirements. 

However, the DaaS industry has been crafting packages that comply with industry-specific regulations, such as HIPAA for healthcare entities. Additionally, the time saved delegating management of infrastructure to a third party may allow more flexibility to proactively address both compliance and strategic long-term data storage, security, development, and other issues and initiatives. 

Costs 

DaaS services operate on a subscription pricing model, which can assist in scaling up or scaling down operations as necessary. Subscription models are excellent for firms looking to minimize their capital expenses (CapEx), enjoy fixed-rate opening expenses (OpEx), and continually adjust their DaaS usage to match evolving consumer and market dynamics. However, DaaS can be as expensive – if not more when factoring in infrastructure – than VDI to access a fully managed service. 

VDI can require significant CapEx for a successful deployment, especially if there is a need to establish a data center or substantially upgrade DCs. VDI can be cost-advantageous for firms with predictable needs, as after the upfront costs are paid, OpEx is relatively low. For firms with fluctuating growth or IT resource demands, VDI will require both CapEx and OpEx to scale systems up or down.    

Elasticity and Flexibility 

The subscription pricing model of DaaS allows rapid scaling up or down from a pricing perspective quite rapidly. From a user perspective, DaaS avoids the need to make hardware purchases and also removes the ‘racking and stacking’ requirement. All that is needed is the flexibility to purchase licensees as needed. Further, DaaS packages usually contain one or more operating system options built-in to their pricing.  

VDI deployments can be less flexible. More expensive and time-consuming to deploy, they also take time and cost money to modify. Further, VDI constrains the ability to experiment with different operating systems because, in addition to hardware, there is a requirement to purchase, deploy, and configure each operating system  — some of which may not be right for some organizations. 

Platform Management 

The most commonly noted difference between the two options, VDI, requires an organization to handle all aspects of installing, maintaining, and monitoring its infrastructure. With DaaS, the vendor manages the infrastructure and provides technical support. 

Firms whose competitive advantage lies in their proprietary tech, and firms that store high quantities of sensitive data subject to extensive regulation, tend to gravitate towards VDI. DaaS attracts many companies without the dedicated IT resources necessary to manage their own tech stack effectively, but each approach has shortcomings left to the end-user to deal with.   

What Does a Good Solution Look Like? 

Regardless of operating environment, it’s likely that when accessing virtual environments, customers value: 

• Ease of access 
• Customizability 
• Security 
• Low maintenance requirements 
• Resource usage 
• Cost  

VDI environments can provide security and customizability but require significant CapEx and OpEx, along with frequent maintenance and management.  

DaaS affords businesses low CapEx and maintenance needs but ultimately provides a lower level of control over configurations and security than VDI. 

End-users will care less about whether a VDI or DaaS deployment decreased network latency by increments or mitigated the risk of data breaches and more about whether they get the kind of access they need when they need it. But businesses know how crucial behind-the-scenes work, like securing endpoints and providing uninterrupted organization-wide access is involved. 

IGEL OS  

Whether currently operating in a VDI or DaaS environment, businesses likely spend considerable time patching or upgrading Windows endpoints — time better spent on other priorities. What’s needed is a low-cost, low-maintenance solution that helps secure endpoints, and is designed for operation in multiple environments across platforms. IGEL OS is that low-cost solution that’s easy to manage and deploy, while providing robust security across devices.  

Tap into this next-gen enterprise platform designed for the new *aaS world. Contact IGEL today to learn more or sign up for a free trial. 

The post Understanding the Differences Between DaaS and Traditional VDI appeared first on IGEL.

Another term that you have probably come across is virtual desktop infrastructure. If you already have a VDI solution, does this mean you have a digital workspace?

Given how confusing the terminology is, this is a very reasonable question to ask, so let’s look at what the two things are and whether they do, indeed, serve the same purpose.

What is a VDI Desktop?

The term VDI was first coined by VMware way back in 2004. Through the VDI Alliance established by VMware in 2006, the desktop virtualization idea was picked up by other vendors, including Citrix. Virtual desktop infrastructure means that a desktop operating system is run in the cloud or in a data center, then delivered to an endpoint device. To the end user, the desktop session should look and feel as if it’s running locally. This allows you to effectively run the OS on almost any type of device, including thin clients, laptops, and mobile devices.

In most cases, VDI uses Windows, but Linux VDI environments are available. One feature of VDI is that it can also be used to allow a user to connect to a physical desktop machine. For example, for workers who are working remotely on a temporary or part-time basis.

What is a Digital Workspace?

A digital workspace is a comprehensive solution designed to present enterprise applications and services to users across devices, locations, and work styles.

It’s possible to define the four parts of a Digital Workspace:

1. An enterprise app store that delivers applications to any device;
2. An identity and access management system;
3. Corporate communications and notifications;
4. Unified Endpoint management

These digital workspace components work together to help keep access smooth and secure.

Differences Between VDI and Digital Workspace

So, back to our central question: Does VDI qualify as a digital workspace? Not quite. There are some key differences that make a true digital workspace a more comprehensive solution for modern agile workforces:

VDI is Windows Focused

For most enterprise purposes, you’re likely using a Windows-based VDI implementation. This means that it primarily serves Windows apps. Windows is designed to operate locally, but with every release and update, the hardware requirements for the endpoint increase. Cloud provides economies of scale, ease of management, and an update cadence that can’t be replicated locally.

VDI is also not as efficient if even some of your apps are not Windows apps. The growth of software-as-a-service means that many of your applications are going to be cloud-native. Some of them will run in a browser window, but others won’t and, in any case, that’s often not the most efficient way to handle things. Windows just wasn’t built to be an access portal to SaaS, and as time goes on, more and more of your vital apps will be provided that way. It’s obvious why — it’s a much steadier revenue stream for your vendors and often easier for you.

Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Both systems require proper identity and access management. However, a VDI system doesn’t inherently include the kind of identity and access management systems modern cybersecurity requires.

Essentially, all VDI does is move the operating system into the cloud. The user still has all the same accesses they did before. If you aren’t properly locking things down so people can only access what they need to do their jobs, switching to VDI won’t do that. And by encouraging remote access, it can even reduce security. Everything still hinges on the desktop password and any other authentication you might have added. This means that you need to add a proper IAM system to your VDI. Domain apps will be protected, but non-domain apps won’t.

If you actually implement a digital workspace, then IAM is an inherent part of this. Done right, it means that each individual user can only access the files and applications they need, reducing the risk if a user account is breached. You can add in biometrics, multi-factor authentication, and even AI-powered behavioral authentication (which, in theory, detects if somebody other than the intended user has accessed an account).

Unified Endpoint Management

Steve Jobs did something amazing when he introduced the iPhone back in 2007. However, he also created a brand new headache for IT teams across the world. Very shortly after bringing out the iPhone, users everywhere wanted to use them for work. Then they wanted MacBooks. And Android devices. And anything else that helped them be productive.

The digital workspace is all about choice. So, allowing your users to use the device that works best for them makes sense. However, you also need to ensure that these devices are correctly configured, secured, and maintained. That’s why the leading digital workspace platforms also allow IT to manage the huge range of devices in the market from one console.

Licensing

In general, both solutions will save you some money on licensing fees. It’s easier with VDI to tell who is actually using what in the standard software suite, and to save money by buying only the licenses you need.

However, a Windows-based VDI requires that you buy this license. Or is it that one? The linked FAQ helps, but there’s one license for PCs, and one for thin clients and BYOD and…yeah. You might have to hire somebody just to help you straighten it all out. If you go straight to a digital workspace, then your vendor will help make sure you have all the licenses you need.

VDI definitely has its uses, but it doesn’t constitute a full digital workspace. While it does a lot of what a digital workspace can do, it uses a lot of dedicated server resources, often has complicated licensing requirements, and doesn’t inherently include the kind of security you need in the modern world.

IGEL Solutions for Digital Workspaces

To find out more about digital workspaces and what they can do for your company, contact IGEL today. We offer complete endpoint solutions that fit every need and can help you build the digital workspaces perfect for your business and employees.

The post VDI and Digital Workspaces Explained appeared first on IGEL.