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Waste Not, Want Not - Raising VDI Performance at the Endpoint

Jeff Kalberg

A recent story in APMdigest revealed the amount of operational waste enterprises are experiencing as IT devotes significantly more time to performance issues related to digital transformation initiatives. The research study detailed in the story finds that IT professionals are losing over 2 hours every business day, or 522 hours per year. Study respondents noted a more complex technology environment was a leading culprit in these performance issues.

Complex technology isn't going away. In fact, more than likely, digital transformation will continue to add technical complexity. One area that enables enterprises to reduce complexity and streamline operations is their virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). Virtualization is a linchpin of digital transformation and effectively optimizing an enterprise's VDI is essential to moving forward with digital technologies.

Delivering the best possible VDI performance means taking a fresh look at what "desktop" means today. The endpoint, or desktop, now can be a physical thin client, a software-defined thin client, a traditional laptop, a phone or tablet.

To reduce operational waste and achieve better performance across the desktop environment, consider these five actions:

1. Accommodating Self-Serve Access

Employees should be able to access certain applications without having to contact an IT help desk. Enabling "self-serve" application access, as appropriate, allows employees to access their personal desktop workspaces, and needed applications, without using valuable IT time.

However, there is a flip side to this: IT needs to control how far employees can take self-service. If employees are spending too much time onboarding more advanced applications, and less time being work-productive, then those applications may need to be controlled by IT.

2. Paying Attention to the Edge

Using centralized management software, IT can control and manage edge devices' use of applications residing in the data center.

For example, software managing thin clients can retrieve a user profile and populate the endpoint with applications that a user needs to be productive. This centralized approach can result in the economies of a single IT person managing as many as 30,000 endpoints – a great reduction in IT time and resources.

3. Thinking Software, not Hardware

Enterprises are moving away from endpoint hardware investments to software that supports the pace of digital transformation. Improving endpoint performance means being able to quickly onboard new employees, deliver custom configurations to a remote workforce using a variety of devices, and to quickly populate new applications for ready use. Endpoint software such as thin client firmware is a means of delivering profiles and applications via a single pane of glass, regardless of device.

4. Understanding User Expectations

Your average worker today wants to use many devices, with the expectation the device will deliver what they need to do their job. The "desktop" of today can range from software-driven thin clients to USB devices. Endpoint management must be able to manage all these devices, control application access and mitigate security risk. It is challenging since, for example, there are many versions of Android and iOS in use, with the threat that users are loading up applications that can pose risk to the network.

USB devices pose one solution, freeing the user from physical boundaries, yet delivering the desired level of endpoint security. A new employee, for example, can plug the device into their personal laptop, and securely receive the configuration and applications they need, without IT ever having to touch the device.

Enterprises are searching for these types of solutions that deliver an optimal user experience without adding to operational complexity.

5. Looking at the Bigger Picture

Getting ahead of digital transformation technology needs, and advancements, is critical to winning the digital game. The alternative is never really catching up with technology and being overwhelmed by the complex IT environments that are becoming standard today.

In the study of operational waste, IT professionals said, if they could reclaim those two hours a day, they would spend more time researching and deploying new systems/technologies.

Staying up to speed on virtualization technology is essential to digital transformation succeeding. Companiesmare innovating technology that plays right into the enablement of high VDI performance. Remote display technology that accommodates workers using graphics intensive applications is an example of delivering innovation that users expect. Freeing up IT time to continue to integrate these enhancements in the user experience has to be part of a thorough digital transformation.

Conclusion: Move Digital Transformation Forward with Optimized VDI

Enterprises are grappling with the challenges of digital transformation, from figuring out cloud deployment, data storage, and BYOD security threats to how to deliver an endpoint experience that optimizes performance.

These five actions will help IT deliver VDI performance that supports digital transformation initiatives. Improvements such as enabling workers to be more self-sufficient, and streamlining endpoint management will reduce operational waste, reduce both operational and capital expenditures, and maps to the market trend toward centralized endpoint management software that can accommodate a variety of devices.

Freeing up IT time will allow IT to better plan for more integration of digital technologies which in turn, increases the enterprise's competitive strength. After all, this is the purpose of digital transformation!

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As businesses increasingly rely on high-performance applications to deliver seamless user experiences, the demand for fast, reliable, and scalable data storage systems has never been greater. Redis — an open-source, in-memory data structure store — has emerged as a popular choice for use cases ranging from caching to real-time analytics. But with great performance comes the need for vigilant monitoring ...

Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

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Waste Not, Want Not - Raising VDI Performance at the Endpoint

Jeff Kalberg

A recent story in APMdigest revealed the amount of operational waste enterprises are experiencing as IT devotes significantly more time to performance issues related to digital transformation initiatives. The research study detailed in the story finds that IT professionals are losing over 2 hours every business day, or 522 hours per year. Study respondents noted a more complex technology environment was a leading culprit in these performance issues.

Complex technology isn't going away. In fact, more than likely, digital transformation will continue to add technical complexity. One area that enables enterprises to reduce complexity and streamline operations is their virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). Virtualization is a linchpin of digital transformation and effectively optimizing an enterprise's VDI is essential to moving forward with digital technologies.

Delivering the best possible VDI performance means taking a fresh look at what "desktop" means today. The endpoint, or desktop, now can be a physical thin client, a software-defined thin client, a traditional laptop, a phone or tablet.

To reduce operational waste and achieve better performance across the desktop environment, consider these five actions:

1. Accommodating Self-Serve Access

Employees should be able to access certain applications without having to contact an IT help desk. Enabling "self-serve" application access, as appropriate, allows employees to access their personal desktop workspaces, and needed applications, without using valuable IT time.

However, there is a flip side to this: IT needs to control how far employees can take self-service. If employees are spending too much time onboarding more advanced applications, and less time being work-productive, then those applications may need to be controlled by IT.

2. Paying Attention to the Edge

Using centralized management software, IT can control and manage edge devices' use of applications residing in the data center.

For example, software managing thin clients can retrieve a user profile and populate the endpoint with applications that a user needs to be productive. This centralized approach can result in the economies of a single IT person managing as many as 30,000 endpoints – a great reduction in IT time and resources.

3. Thinking Software, not Hardware

Enterprises are moving away from endpoint hardware investments to software that supports the pace of digital transformation. Improving endpoint performance means being able to quickly onboard new employees, deliver custom configurations to a remote workforce using a variety of devices, and to quickly populate new applications for ready use. Endpoint software such as thin client firmware is a means of delivering profiles and applications via a single pane of glass, regardless of device.

4. Understanding User Expectations

Your average worker today wants to use many devices, with the expectation the device will deliver what they need to do their job. The "desktop" of today can range from software-driven thin clients to USB devices. Endpoint management must be able to manage all these devices, control application access and mitigate security risk. It is challenging since, for example, there are many versions of Android and iOS in use, with the threat that users are loading up applications that can pose risk to the network.

USB devices pose one solution, freeing the user from physical boundaries, yet delivering the desired level of endpoint security. A new employee, for example, can plug the device into their personal laptop, and securely receive the configuration and applications they need, without IT ever having to touch the device.

Enterprises are searching for these types of solutions that deliver an optimal user experience without adding to operational complexity.

5. Looking at the Bigger Picture

Getting ahead of digital transformation technology needs, and advancements, is critical to winning the digital game. The alternative is never really catching up with technology and being overwhelmed by the complex IT environments that are becoming standard today.

In the study of operational waste, IT professionals said, if they could reclaim those two hours a day, they would spend more time researching and deploying new systems/technologies.

Staying up to speed on virtualization technology is essential to digital transformation succeeding. Companiesmare innovating technology that plays right into the enablement of high VDI performance. Remote display technology that accommodates workers using graphics intensive applications is an example of delivering innovation that users expect. Freeing up IT time to continue to integrate these enhancements in the user experience has to be part of a thorough digital transformation.

Conclusion: Move Digital Transformation Forward with Optimized VDI

Enterprises are grappling with the challenges of digital transformation, from figuring out cloud deployment, data storage, and BYOD security threats to how to deliver an endpoint experience that optimizes performance.

These five actions will help IT deliver VDI performance that supports digital transformation initiatives. Improvements such as enabling workers to be more self-sufficient, and streamlining endpoint management will reduce operational waste, reduce both operational and capital expenditures, and maps to the market trend toward centralized endpoint management software that can accommodate a variety of devices.

Freeing up IT time will allow IT to better plan for more integration of digital technologies which in turn, increases the enterprise's competitive strength. After all, this is the purpose of digital transformation!

The Latest

As businesses increasingly rely on high-performance applications to deliver seamless user experiences, the demand for fast, reliable, and scalable data storage systems has never been greater. Redis — an open-source, in-memory data structure store — has emerged as a popular choice for use cases ranging from caching to real-time analytics. But with great performance comes the need for vigilant monitoring ...

Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...