The present-day workforce demands more collaboration and visibility in the workplace as compared to yesteryears. They want enterprise applications to operate like consumer applications – easy-to-use, interoperable, and accessible from anywhere, anytime, and on any device. Recent Gartner report suggests that, by 2023, 70% of enterprises will support Android-based systems owing to greater employee demand, highly secure platforms, and dynamic business needs. This indicates that enterprises will need to revisit their EUC architecture and deliver a work environment that is device- and location-independent and ensures accessibility to applications across devices, regardless of their operating systems.
In such a scenario, enterprises will have to adopt a workforce-centric approach while implementing their EUC strategy. This would involve understanding and validating the number of users, their workload requirements and identifying potential use cases and the business applications to be accessed, peripheral, network, and security requirements.
Enterprises will need to move away from the traditional computing infrastructure and adopt cloud (public, private or hybrid) to accelerate their EUC transformation journey. A Forbes insight in-depth study, “Collaborating in the cloud,” highlights how business leaders look at cloud collaboration as a sure-shot way to increase productivity, obtain concrete results, and enhance innovation. It also depicts how adopting cloud technology is a business enabler in this digital age.
Moving workloads to the cloud will empower the workforce with secure and seamless access to applications and desktops across any device, anytime and anywhere. However, it is essential to provide continuous support to address any issues pertaining to end-user performance, mainly until the environment stabilises and teething problems are resolved.
End-User Computing for Businesses
To put it simply, EUC or End User Computing encompasses all computer systems, platforms and scalable technology that the core IT teams use. With EUC services, end-users within an organization get access to their applications, data and workstations required for their daily jobs on any device they prefer.
A crucial aspect of EUC is the VDI or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure technology, in which desktop environments are hosted on a central server and deployed to end-users upon request. It is a form of desktop virtualization as end-users work on specific desktop images running on virtual machines delivered over a network. This allows individuals to be introduced to new technologies seamlessly and use them without requiring system expertise. Besides, they can create and use simple applications without involvement from the IT team.
In essence, EUC services facilitate employees and stakeholders to connect and share data securely within their organizations as well as externally.
Implementing EUC for The Modern Workforce
Organizations today are having a diverse footprint when it comes to their geographical and physical presence. As remote working gradually turns to become the new normal, delivering consistent workplace resources becomes quite challenging. A EUC/VDI solution solves the problem. It offers improved and consistent resources to users as well as secure access to applications from remote places.
Moreover, as organizations try to establish their foothold in the competitive market, they need a variety of digital platforms to support their remote workforce. In this case, EUC services can help develop a hybrid multi-cloud environment so that it becomes effortless for remote users to access data from their applications and desktops across multiple devices. Consequently, users can increase their productivity while staying compliant with the platform requirements as well.
The primary objective behind implementing EUC/VDI solution is to identify all databases and the critical applications essential for day-to-day operations and consolidate them into an optimised platform, which remains the same throughout. Given the fast-changing workplace due to technological and digital innovation, the modern workforce needs a flexible and optimised platform, which is possible through streamlined EUC services.
For larger organizations that have internal data centres, employees can log in to their workspaces through their own devices with a VDI setup. As mentioned earlier, with VDI, users work on desktop images running on virtual machines created by using virtualization and hyper-convergence technology. The virtual machines offer data, applications as well as storage depending on the role of the user and the tasks assigned to them.
On the other hand, leaner organizations that don’t need complete control over their resources can simply access the equivalent of VDI over a public, private, or hybrid cloud infrastructure. With DaaS or Desktop-as-a-Service, users can access Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure apps, etc. easily through an HTML browser and integrate with SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS resources as well. For employees, this translates into hassle-free working with just a browser-enabled device and an internet connection.
Digital Transformation of The Workforce with EUC Services
The deployment of new cloud-based EUC architecture should deliver the following benefits:
Higher desktop-&-application availability – By enabling high desktop-and-application availability on the cloud, enterprises can achieve high operational continuity. A continuous and proactive monitoring and management solution enhances end-user performance significantly.
Lower MTTR (Mean-Time-To- Resolution) – Proactive monitoring of the virtual desktops on cloud infrastructure, including essential services like active directory, DNS, and network, will be pretty important. It should also include supervision of availability, capacity and performance of the applications. Therefore, proactive management and control can lead to resolution of end-user issues before it impacts users adversely. Pinpointing exact issue location, event correlation for all abnormalities, and addressing performance, capacity and configuration issues in advance can lead to reduced MTTR.
User migration, consistent patch upgrades, and zero business disruption – Centralised management of virtual desktops on the cloud enable seamless new user addition/deletion, implementation of updates, and patch upgrades while ensuring zero business disruption. This prevents any abnormal impact on end-user operations, thereby leading to enhanced productivity of the employees.
Anytime, anywhere, any device access – Cloud desktops are delivered to end-users anywhere, anytime, on any device. The cloud desktop solutions are tailored for remote work and mobile workforce due to their location-independence and device-agnostic requirements. Therefore, enabling users to work from the comfort of their home or even far-off places, even in the case of natural calamities, augment employee productivity significantly.
Secure Single sign-on & Scalability – Using a secure sign-on, applications can be easily added to an existing suite. This is helpful in new employee onboarding or inter-departmental switches. Cloud desktops also facilitate ease of scaling up/down depending on utilisation and addition/deletion of new users in case of mergers and acquisitions, seasonal peak loads and so on, thereby providing a boost to employee productivity.
As enterprises start moving their workloads to the cloud as part of their EUC transformation, they will need to keep an end-user centric approach that maximises application availability and workforce productivity. Available on a pay-as-you-go model, cloud streamlines the way enterprises can build, configure, manage and deliver desktops to their end-users and allow them anywhere, anytime access to their applications and data.
As a EUC transformation specialist, Anunta implements and manages some of the most complex use cases for some of the largest enterprises. With deep domain expertise in all virtualisation technologies, including Citrix, VMware and Microsoft and the ability to work on multiple cloud platforms like Azure and AWS, Anunta takes end-to-end ownership of the whole EUC environment focusing on critical operational continuity and proactive issues resolution.
promises seamless mobility and secure availability of data and applications – addressing key challenges in delivering seamless end-user experience. Enterprises with in-house or collocated data centers often choose the VDI way of virtual desktops as it offers full control over hardware, software and data minimizing the threat of data loss and device theft. However, VDI deployments require upfront Capex and specialized skills to deploy and manage virtual desktops making it an extremely challenging proposition for IT teams.
