What are the key challenges of delivering VDI or virtual desktops in the cloud?

There are many “Cloud” service providers out in the market. Cloud is such a buzz word that people have glommed on to it, though there is still some confusion as to what it really is. It’s taking shape as data that is simply not in your hands, but someone else’s. The interesting thing will be to see how Cloud products develop and are sold in the next 2-5 years as everyone races to get a piece of the pie.

Many service providers offer disparate products. An administrator within an organization has to work to integrate data between many different sources. Local data on the desktop, data on the server, CRM data from one Cloud provider, email from another, and ERP from yet another make this difficult. Although there are many different solutions out there, the majority of them aren’t friendly to the end user or the administrator.
Virtual Desktop in the Cloud aims to solve many of these challenges. It’s one of the most difficult services to offer to customers because the flexibility and integration inherent to it also pose challenges, and so there are few providers that offer this service as compared to hosted Exchange, CRM, or other stand-alone products.

Integration of Key Applications

A key feature to look for is a provider’s ability to integrate third part applications. Ongoing Operations offers integration and delivery of virtually any application that can be installed on a user’s current desktop. This means that an end user on a virtual desktop can work identically to how they work today, without special training, or introducing new software packages. Having skilled support staff able to troubleshoot problems against a myriad of applications is essential. Unfortunately many providers will limit their desktops to specific applications, requiring a company administrator to look for ways to integrate multiple disparate systems.

Support for Custom Applications

Another challenge is that some providers will offer a wide range of applications within their desktop, but they won’t support those applications. Users and administrators are left to piece together support, which can often mean multiple phone calls and finger pointing between vendors. And some providers will also only allow a limited number of users to call in for support, leaving many users at an organization within a direct support contact and taking up time from multiple internal employees at an organization to fix a problem. Ongoing Operations offers support for all applications directly to users, including custom third party applications. When a user calls in with an issue for a product that isn’t in our standard list, we contact the vendor on behalf of the user if required. This saves the user from having to determine who to call first, and gives them a single point of contact for all support.

Security Improvements

Once basic usability is addressed, security becomes a major concern for most organizations. Ongoing Operations utilizes many layers of security to ensure a stable work environment that users can depend on, and administrators can feel good about. Ongoing Operations has current SSAE Type II certification, and we do not outsource any of our servers, data or personnel, so all data and equipment is within our direct control. All external access to our data center is secured using a minimum of 128bit encryption. Ongoing Operations supports customers requiring direct VPN connections to their data utilizing either software clients or physical hardware devices and 256bit AES encryption. External data is processed by industry leading firewalls and intrusion prevention systems, along with web application firewalling. Our internal systems are also firewalled at both the network level and server level. Many other virtual desktop providers do not provide this multi-layer security and often offer direct access using common protocols, like Microsoft Remote Desktop, to directly access their server over the Internet. Additionally, many providers do not host their own equipment. This creates gaps in security and responsibility, and not only leads to a less secure data environment, but longer times to resolve support issues.

Application Hosting

Virtual Desktop alone is not a sufficient solution for many customers. Integrating custom applications often requires database services such as Microsoft SQL or Oracle, Exchange, Lync, CRM, VoIP and even servers located on a customer’s premise. Finding a provider with a wide breadth of services is crucial. Ongoing Operations offers many services, including those previously mentioned, along with custom remote backup, DR, Lync, ERP, SharePoint, helpdesk and more. Finding other providers in the market that have this range is a challenge, and most only offer a subset of services.

For Credit Unions

If you work at a Credit Union, there tend to be some additional challenges related to the core. Cores tend to have lots of requirements around peripherals such as check scanners, printers, receipt printers etc. In addition, many of the Credit Union applications such as lending, collections or ATM systems have even more unique requirements for hosting and require customization and SLAs that the public cloud offerings just can’t handle.

Are you intersted in learning how Virtual Desktops can save you money, time and improve your security? Do you want to know what Applications are already supported on the Ongoing Operations cloud? If so, pleas e-mail as at info@ongoingoperations.com or fill out our contact us form.

 

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