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By Xenia von Wedel |
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December 23, 2016 08:30 AM EST |
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What is new about Workspot Desktop as a Service 2.0 (DaaS 2.0) on Microsoft Azure?
Brad Peterson, VP of Marketing at Workspot: First, Workspot VDI 2.0 is the industry's first cloud-native, multi-tenant, infinitely scalable VDI solution, when combined with a customer's datacenter infrastructure, can have desktops and apps up and available to their users in a day.Now, Workspot DaaS 2.0 is the industry's first full-cloud Desktop as a Service solution combining Workspot VDI 2.0 with Microsoft Azure to deliver thousands of desktops in a day, in any part of the world and with zero CapEx.
Are you a DaaS platform provider (a company that supplies the technology but offers services like on-boarding assistance for an additional fee) or a DaaS service provider (a company that manages your VDI environment after deployment as a part of the service)?
Peterson: Workspot is a DaaS service provider. We will on-board our customers onto our solution. There is no additional fee for the onboarding service. If customers want, we will also manage their VDI environment after deployment for an additional fee.
What kind of virtual desktop am I buying? Persistent or non-persistent desktop and what does that mean for the deployment?
Peterson: We support both persistent and non-persistent desktops. We recommend choosing the right type of desktop based on the use-case. For knowledge workers, developers, and others we would recommend persistent desktops. For kiosk, call centers, and retail environments, we would recommend non-persistent desktops. Customers can use their existing desktop management tools for persistent desktops. For non-persistent desktops we have image update tools built into the Workspot solution.
How many desktops do you currently support?
Peterson: Unlimited. The Workspot VDI 2.0 cloud has no limit to its number of managed desktops, while the Azure cloud and it's 34+ datacenters host the actual desktop VMs.
What are the requirements for bandwidth, and who provides troubleshooting for connectivity issues?
Peterson: The unique architecture of the Workspot Client reduces the number of hops for authentication and data connections. In most circumstances, the user is directly connecting to their applications and desktops. This architecture dramatically reduces connectivity issues. The Workspot client is instrumented to collect performance, availability, and usage data. This data is sent up to the cloud when the client is on a high bandwidth wireless network. IT can use the data to analyze bandwidth and connectivity issues. Our customer success team is always available to help customers resolve any issues their users might be seeing.
Do you only deliver DaaS from the cloud or do you also offer an on-premises option?
How do you measure end-user performance and success (e.g., speed for end user, user acceptance, uptime)?
Peterson: We have a single solution that delivers both VDI 2.0 and DaaS 2.0. VDI 2.0 is where the Workspot cloud manages customer owned and operated, on-prem VDI. DaaS 2.0 is where Workspot cloud manages Azure desktops and apps. The Workspot client is instrumented to collect performance, availability, and usage data. This data is sent up to the cloud when the client is on a high bandwidth wireless network. The data enables IT to measure uptime and real end user performance across four dimensions: network, geography, applications, and device type.
What is your migration plan?
Peterson: Workspot Desktop VMs are stored as VHDs and can be migrated and used with most other VDI systems without issue.
What performance expectations are set by the Service Level Agreement (SLA) and historical performance?
Peterson: Our historical uptime has been very high. Our upgrades are live, i.e., there is no scheduled downtime, we just swap one live instance for the new one.
What kind of network connection do my users need?
Peterson: Mobile users would connect over the LAN or the WAN from all over the world, which would typically mean cellular LTE or Wi-Fi broadband connections. The traffic between the Workspot client on the user's mobile device and the desktops & apps in the Azure cloud (or on prem in local datacenters) consists of RDP traffic for windows, html traffic for web apps, and CIFS traffic for network file shares, all of which is compressed and encrypted and optimized for delivery over LAN and WAN connections.
Can you deliver single apps in addition to a whole desktop?
Peterson: Yes, just install windows apps on RDS (terminal services) and share web application URLs directly.
What endpoint devices are does Workspot support (e.g., Android, Apple, thin client)?
Peterson: Workspot supports Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and Thin Client endpoint devices.
How to provision new users with your solution? Is it significantly more efficient than desktop management?
Peterson: The Workspot DaaS 2.0 solution is cloud-native, multi-tenant, and infinitely and instantly scalable to millions of users. To provision new users through the Workspot control UI - click on the desired Azure location, select a VM template and associated parameters, select the number of VMs to spin up and launch. Then associate the users with the newly created VMs and they are now ready to access their desktops immediately. Yes, this is significantly more efficient than traditional desktop management.
How do you support offline usage, and what security and data considerations are there for offline usage?
Peterson: When offline the Workspot client has access to its encrypted files for viewing and editing, then syncing once reconnected.
Tell us about your first deployments / reference client examples?
Peterson: Workspot DaaS 2.0 was just announced last week. Simultaneous to this we're working closely with Microsoft on detailed Azure integrations and tracking their enablement of Windows 10 VM licensing on Azure, which we expect soon. With this, we have a handful of customers that are ranging from 50 to 2,500 users, all using Windows 10 VMs across several Azure locations, including larger sites using virtualized GPUs in their Azure configuration.
Anything else you would like to share?
Peterson: Customers and resellers are looking for a single platform that enables them to deploy virtual desktops and applications in a hybrid mode - for some users the desktops run on-premises, for others in the cloud. Workspot is the only multi-tenant, cloud native enabled platform that supports both VDI 2.0 and DaaS 2.0 from a single pane of glass.
Xenia von Wedel is a Tech blogger and Enterprise Media Consultant in Mountain View, serving clients in a variety of industries worldwide. She is focused on thought leadership content creation and syndication, media outreach and strategy. She mainly writes about Enterprise, B2B solutions, social media and open source software, but throws the occasional oddball into the mix.
Buy her a coffee if you like her article: http://xeniar.tip.me
@ThingsExpo Stories By Liz McMillan  SYS-CON Events has announced today that Roger Strukhoff has been named conference chair of Cloud Expo and @ThingsExpo 2017 New York.
The 20th Cloud Expo and 7th @ThingsExpo will take place on June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.
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In his session at 19th Cloud Expo, Mark Allen, General Manager of... Dec. 23, 2016 10:30 AM EST Reads: 2,324 | By Liz McMillan  So, you bought into the current machine learning craze and went on to collect millions/billions of records from this promising new data source. Now, what do you do with them? Too often, the abundance of data quickly turns into an abundance of problems. How do you extract that "magic essence" from your data without falling into the common pitfalls? In her session at @ThingsExpo, Natalia Ponomareva, Software Engineer at Google, provided tips on how to be successful in large scale machine learning.... Dec. 23, 2016 10:30 AM EST Reads: 5,000 | By Yeshim Deniz  20th Cloud Expo, taking place June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading industry players in the world. Cloud computing is now being embraced by a majority of enterprises of all sizes. Yesterday's debate about public vs. private has transformed into the reality of hybrid cloud: a recent survey shows that 74% of enterprises have a hybrid cloud strategy. Dec. 23, 2016 10:15 AM EST Reads: 2,428 | By Elizabeth White  "Covisint is a technology company and it's been purpose-built to bring people, things and applications together - if you think about IoT that's the definition," stated Timothy Evavold, Executive Director Automotive at Covisint, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at @ThingsExpo, held November 1-3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Dec. 23, 2016 10:00 AM EST Reads: 1,030 | By Liz McMillan  The emerging Internet of Everything creates tremendous new opportunities for customer engagement and business model innovation. However, enterprises must overcome a number of critical challenges to bring these new solutions to market. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Michael Martin, CTO/CIO at nfrastructure, outlined these key challenges and recommended approaches for overcoming them to achieve speed and agility in the design, development and implementation of Internet of Everything solutions with... Dec. 23, 2016 10:00 AM EST Reads: 4,836 | By Pat Romanski  The Internet of Things (IoT) promises to simplify and streamline our lives by automating routine tasks that distract us from our goals. This promise is based on the ubiquitous deployment of smart, connected devices that link everything from industrial control systems to automobiles to refrigerators. Unfortunately, comparatively few of the devices currently deployed have been developed with an eye toward security, and as the DDoS attacks of late October 2016 have demonstrated, this oversight can ... Dec. 23, 2016 10:00 AM EST Reads: 2,010 |
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