All posts by Jamie Davies

cloud adoption, Enterprise IT, Legacy Systems, News & Analysis, Shadow IT, Trustmarque

81% of CIOs believe legacy systems are having negative impact on business

racing horses starting a raceResearch from Trustmarque has highlighted 81% of CIOs believe legacy infrastructures are having a negative impact on the IT department’s productivity levels.

The report stated the majority of CIOs see the legacy systems as a drain on IT resources and 86% believe IT management has become more complex over the last five years, owing to the fact teams have to juggle between the impact of cloud and mobile, as well as delivering on legacy systems. Due to the increased number of SLA’s and an increasingly diverse number of vendors to support both new and legacy technologies, 58% are struggling to deliver a consistent level of IT across the business.

“Providing comprehensive, consistent IT support in today’s complex IT world is a huge challenge for CIOs. It’s unsurprising many are finding IT management a growing burden,” said Mike Henson, Director, Cloud and Managed Services, Trustmarque. “Particularly where there is a lot of legacy technology, CIOs have an important decision to make – whether to continue to support legacy IT, or explore migration to the cloud – where support costs can be considerably lower.

“Today, IT might be easier to use than ever, but it’s also much more complex to manage and support. The business IT model has shifted, digital experiences are high on the agenda, along with a desire to consume rather than build IT. This shift has caused considerable strain on CIOs’ time, resources and budgets.”

While cloud could now be seen as a priority throughout the industry, the majority of businesses are having to navigate a number of transformation projects to implement the technology. In reality, very few companies are in a position to deliver a Greenfield cloud proposition within their organization, leading to complications in managing the co-existence of cloud and legacy, as the report indicates.

One are which this is seemingly having a direct impact is on innovation. As IT complexity has increased, the report indicates the number of ‘tickets’ being raised throughout the business has also increased. This in turn keeps IT employees focused on operational tasks (“keeping the lights on”) as opposed to focusing on implementation of new technologies to support digital transformation projects. 77% of the CIOs questioned in the survey confirmed one of their top priorities was to reduce the proportion of internal resource devoted to operational IT, freeing team members up to invest more time in transformational IT projects.

“In today’s increasingly connected world, business IT is unpredictable – changing to reflect varied business needs and the ways in which modern employees want to work,” said Henson. “Many CIOs struggle to balance the need to run business IT as usual, while at the same time delivering innovative new services to demanding users. Clearly, CIOs recognise the growing need for continued innovation within their organisation – but also recognise that a lack of internal resources and skills can hamper this ambition.”

Although general consensus throughout the industry is leaning towards cloud penetrating the mainstream marketplace, it is unlikely we’ll see cloud and other emerging technologies as the default until resource can be effectively moved away from operational IT. A number of different businesses have stated the need to transform to remain competitive in the marketplace, thought the report does imply these projects are unlikely to succeed until the idea of IT as simply a support function is removed from the business mind-set.

Enterprise IT, News & Analysis

Dynatrace and Pivotal Cloud Foundry announce new partnership

welder weld root weld from inside of big pipePerformance management company Dynatrace has announced a new partnership with Pivotal to monitor the performance of transactions across their Pivotal Cloud Foundry app and micro-services portfolio.

Dynatrace Application Monitoring Service Broker Tile and Buildpack Extensions will offer customers the opportunity to identify and resolve performance issues during and after a cloud migration project. The team claim the new offering will enable customers to create performance standards, which will ultimately improve user experience.

“The root-cause-analysis capabilities in Dynatrace products solve the new set of challenges that a Cloud Native microservices architecture creates – namely, that there are so many moving parts, it can be difficult to identify the underlying cause of aberrant system behaviour,” said Joshua McKenty, Head of Platform Ecosystem at Pivotal.

The migration to cloud computing has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, as companies are aiming to create more business value around the projects, building use cases which extend beyond a reduction in CAPEX/OPEX. Dynatrace claim the new product will enable customers to maintain visibility of all apps, containers and VMs under management, as well as identifying root causes of performance troughs. The new offering is mainly aimed at those focused on cloud native application development and multi-cloud deployments, with Dynatrace claiming developers can now proactively optimize end-to-end transaction latencies.

“For Pivotal Cloud Foundry users, this collaboration will result in new levels of actionable insight into their apps,” said Rob Cohen, VP of Strategic Business Development at Dynatrace. “Equally important for companies leading the Cloud Native approach, it will encourage better collaboration through data transparency, which is a key part of continuous delivery in the cloud.”

data centre, data protection, data residency, Datacentre, DropBox, EU, News & Analysis

Dropbox opens Hamburg office to reduce US/EU data concerns

Dropbox GermanyDropbox has announced the opening of its latest European office, branching into the German market ahead of plans to open a new data centre in Europe latter in the year.

The company has answered concerns from European customers regarding the transmission of data across the Atlantic by committing to hosting their data within the EU; a region which the company claims is generating the majority of recent growth. This commitment has also been backed up with the company opening new offices in Dublin, London, Paris and Amsterdam, in addition to Hamburg.

Data residency has been an issue for European customers for a number of months since the Court of Justice of the European Union declared Safe Harbour void last October. Since then, there have been a number of efforts to sooth the relationship between the US and the EU, though the issue still remains contentious and newer drafts Safe Harbour have been criticized by various European quarters.

As Europe represents a healthy growth region for the Dropbox, it would appear the team are not prepared to wait for the EU/US data storm to blow over. Opening a new data centre in Germany has the potential for Dropbox to avoid the repercussions of the long-standing dispute.

“From manufacturing to professional services to healthcare, industries in Europe and around the world are discovering the benefits of increased collaboration on Dropbox,” said Thomas Hansen, Global VP of Revenue at Dropbox. “And the opening of our Hamburg office is just a part of our European commitment.

“From co-working spaces to corporations, people bring Dropbox to work, and adoption in Germany has been phenomenal. The top three cities in terms of Dropbox signups are also the largest: Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich. But Karlsruhe and Dresden are the real hotspots when measuring users per capita.”

As with other freemium business models Dropbox has reportedly found difficulties in upgrading customers to the paid-for services. The company launched a new relationship with Adyen last year to offer localized payment models in 12 European countries, build around a direct debit payment mechanism, a more popular model in the European markets, as opposed to PayPal or credit card models.

Big Data, Data Driven Decision Making, data science, DNV GL, Enterprise IT, News & Analysis

Organizations struggling to capitalize on benefits of big data

Laptop Screen with Big Data Concept.Big data is now considered one of the more significant priorities of businesses through 2016 however research from DNV GL has highlighted only 23% of organizations have a defined strategy moving forward.

According to research from the business assurance arm of DNV GL, while the majority (52%) of companies have outlined the importance of big data for future operations, roughly only a quarter have the capabilities to fulfil the promise and capitalize fully on the benefits. The interest increases significantly for larger organizations, those of 1000 or more employees, as 70% highlighted it as a priority.

“Big data is changing the game in a number of industries, representing new opportunities and challenges,” says Luca Crisciotti, CEO of DNV GL – Business Assurance. “I believe that companies that recognize and implement strategies and plans to leverage the information in their data pools have increased opportunities to become more efficient and meet their market and stakeholders better.”

One of the larger concerns for big data which have been voiced in conference and articles in recent months is an organizations ability to act upon the potential of the information now available. The volume of data is growing at a notable rate, though one concern is few organizations have the current technological capabilities or adequately trained employees to realize the potential.

BCN has been told during numerous conversations many organizations current capabilities can only analyse a small proportion, between 5-25% dependent on who you speak to, of the data collected. Until organizations are capable of analysing and actioning larger proportions of the data, the potential of big data or the promised ROI will not be achieved. DNV GL claim 16% of organizations are viewing better business decision making and 11% for financial savings, are the aims of big data, while 16% have prioritised an improved user experience.

“The ability to use data to obtain actionable knowledge and insights is inevitable for companies that want to keep growing and profiting,” said Crisciotti. “The data analyst or scientist will be crucial in most organizations in the near future.”

DNV GL believe more has to be done to enable and prepare the organization for utilizing big data to the full extent. The team claims only 28% have improved information management and 25% have implemented new technologies and methods. From an employee perspective, only 16% have addressed the internal culture and 15% the company’s business model.

Big data has been championed as a means to drive efficiency within organizations, but also as an opportunity to create a more personalized experience for customers in the digital era. It is also a prelude to artificial intelligence, another area which has been dominating headlines in recent months, neither of which will be achievable until investments have been made in technology and personnel to increase the proportion of data which can be understood and actioned.

Juniper, News & Analysis, SDN, Software Defined Data Centre, Software Defined Networking

What is the role of SDN in data centre security?

Door to new opportunitySoftware Defined Networking (SDN) is a breakthrough which is seemingly in everyone’s technology roadmap, but not ‘sexy’ enough to command column inches in recent months. At Telco Cloud, Juniper Cloud Automation Architect Scott Alexander argued the use case for security.

Companies who are striving towards 100% secure are likely to be disappointed as most within the industry now accept this is not achievable. Irrelevant of how many advances are made to secure the data centre, there will always be a collection of individuals who dedicate time to find new weaknesses. The new objective for the majority is to remain as secure as possible, consistently, reacting as quickly as possible to new threats which may emerge.

One of the main challenges for the data centre is the traditional defence. A number of data centres have one large firewall around the perimeter, which can be effective at keeping out threats, but on the occasion one breaches defences, traditional data centres are very linear, allowing the threat to roam freely. Larger segments of the data centre will be ring fenced, however the same principle applies here; once you crack that defence you are once again free to roam.

Alexander highlighted once you write various SDN policies, you can define which applications can ‘talk’ to each other. Until this is defined through an effective SDN policy, an application can talk to any other application, create the free roaming problem. Once a threat is in the data centre damage control becomes very difficult.

If every application is a room with several doors, Alexander said though implementing SDN you can keep relevant doors open and close doors to areas a given applications has no need to have access to. Spinning up various applications allows you to retain internal perimeters and create a policy of damage control.

Virtualizing a company’s assets can be a painful process, as it has to be done application by application. This however can be an advantage as Alexander highlighted to understand what doors are open and closed, you have to analyse the applications individually; there isn’t currently a method to do a blanket risk assessment of your applications. As you are migrating the applications individually any case during the virtualization efforts, it shouldn’t be too much of a task to understand what doors are open.

For the most part, the concept of 100% secure has seemingly been irradiated from the industry; most have accepted it is almost impossible. However, segmented security can aid a team in driving towards the objective of remaining secure as possible, consistently.

CRM, Digital Transformation, Enterprise IT, News & Analysis, Salesforce

Salesforce reveals secret recipe for digital transformation

Salesforce 1Speaking at the London edition of Salesforce’s world tour, EVP of Customer Success & Growth Simon Short outlined the case for digital transformation, and also the factors which underpin a successful transformation project itself.

Short’s view on digital transformation is there are very few companies who achieve the goal of becoming digitally orientated. This is done to three reasons. Firstly, the aggressive expansion of technology is so vast some organizations are drowning in information overload. Another is the cultural side of digital transformation, there simply aren’t enough companies embracing the necessity of cultural change. And finally, despite implementing various technologies and advanced platforms, some companies still operate in silos. Until these digital silos are connected on one overarching platform, the digital transformation journey is not complete.

The invention of chess is a good anecdote to demonstrate the progression of technology. The inventor, Ibn Khallikan, approached the Indian king with the game and his reward was to be rice, more specifically one grain for the first square on the chess board, two for the second, four for the third, and doubling there on until the end of the 64 squares. Although at first it would not appear to be a great amount, the geometric progression of the amount of rice far exceeded the king’s resources. Short believes the same theory can be applied to the growth of technology in the business world.

“If you apply the same doubling theory and Moore’s law to the growth and importance of technology, we get have way through the chess board in 2002,” said Short. “Since then we’ve seen an explosion of technology within the business world. As we continue to move forward, it’s a real challenge for those with existing technology to make the change and get ahead of the trend. No one really knows what the power of technology is and where it will go. This is the conundrum for businesses throughout the world.”

One of the main challenges here is focused around legacy technologies, businesses cannot rid themselves of the cumbersome platforms quickly enough to capitalize on the potential on emerging technologies. But at the same time, Short highlighted the companies who focus on technology implementation and do not embrace the cultural change required will not be successful in the digital transformation journey.

Salesman painting tree instead of cityAccording to Short, digital transformation is so much more than simply implementing technology. Ensuring you employees embrace the digital change, as well as connecting the individual silos (for example the eCommerce platform to the customer call centre and also the logistics/delivery team), are more important aspects of the project than the technology itself. Without the digital culture and the connected model, the customer simply sees a business which is broken even if the technology is revolutionary. “Silos and culture are the two things which can kill any transformation project,” said Short.

But what is the secret to a successful digital transformation project? And what have the successful ‘Digital Masters’ done which other companies haven’t?

For Short, the project has to be led by the CEO and has to be phased in. The various different components of the project (business change, strategy, technology implementation, employee digital engagement etc.) have to be implemented hand-in-hand. If one area progresses faster than the rest, the project will stutter. And most importantly, there has to be a governance and accountability role, an area which most companies overlook, to ensure all components of the project are heading in the same direction and progressing at the same speed. In general, there are six lessons from Short’s and Salesforce’s perspective:

  1. Change has to be led from the CEO and not delegated down. The business unit and IT cannot get into a shouting match, pointed fingers at each other, the CEO needs to take control and pull the business along with him
  2. Physical and digital experience needs to be co-ordinated. The customer experiences the brand in the physical world as well as the digital despite the growth of the internet and technology; the physical and digital experience for the customer needs to be co-ordinated to be successful
  3. Outside-in thinking. Many companies make the mistake of telling their customers about how they are changing the brand, as opposed to understanding what the customer journey is and adapting the digital experience to enhance this.
  4. Understanding it’s okay to fail. This is one of the more challenging facets according to Short, as accountable businesses don’t like to fail. But the belief every PoC will be an extraordinary success is somewhat wishful thinking. Short highlighted being okay with failure is the only way to move on and achieve success.
  5. Data driven insights. The amount of data available to businesses is unprecedented and growing faster every day. Decisions should be based on the data available which has been derived directly from the customer. It removes uncertainty (as much as possible in any case) and provides justification.
  6. A single platform to connect the business units. Without a single platform to connect all business units, digital transformation cannot be achieved, as digital transformation should focus on the connected journey. The aim should be the seamlessly interact with the customer on all their touchpoints.

Digital transformation is a key objective for the majority of businesses around the world, and rightly so. According to MIT research which Short quoted on stage, digitally transformed businesses are 26% more profitable than what would be perceived as the norm, but too many companies are focusing on the technology as opposed to the customer. Until the ideas of culture, technology and silo connections are addressed on a level playing field, digital transformation cannot be achieved.

Cisco, Collaboration, data centre, Financial Results, IoT, News & Analysis, software

Cisco reports 3% growth for Q3 and sets targets on IoT market

Cisco corporateCisco has reported 3% year-on-year growth for Q3, topping $12 billion for the quarter, with its security business leading the charge, though the team have reconfirmed IOT, software cloud and collaboration markets are priorities for the future.

The security portfolio demonstrated revenue growth of 17% while deferred revenue grew 31% driven by the ongoing shift from hardware to more software and subscription services. The Collaboration portfolio grew 16%, while the team were also confident in the performance of its next generation data centre portfolio. The ACI platform grew revenues approximately 100%, exceeding a $2 billion annualized run-rate.

“We delivered strong Q3 results against the backdrop of the Macro environment that continues to be uncertain,” said CEO Charles Robbins. “Despite this uncertainty we executed very well, with revenue growth of 3%. The operational changes we continued to make will further enable our customers to leverage strategic role to network as they transform their businesses to become digital.”

Regionally, the America’s accounted for a 4% lift, whereas EMEA and APJ were slightly less at 2% and 1% respectively. The emerging markets demonstrated healthy results for the business, as BRICs increased by 4%, Mexico by 4%, China up 22% and India up 18%. The team highlighted while there was good growth in the public and service provider segments, the enterprise was not as positive as the team pointed towards pressure driven by macro uncertainty as the reasoning.

The quarter also saw Cisco as one of the more active players in the M&A market, completing five acquisitions over the course of the quarter. The $1.4 billion acquisition of Jasper Technologies now makes Cisco the largest cloud based IOT service platform in the industry, the team claims. Cisco also completed the acquisitions of Acano, Synata, Leaba and CliQr during the period, the latter a $260 million orchestration platform to help customers simplify and accelerate their private, public and hybrid cloud deployment. Cisco had already integrated CliQr with its Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) and Unified Computing systems (UCS) prior to acquisition.

“These acquisitions are clearly focused on our key growth areas including IOT, software cloud and collaboration as well as continuing to strengthen our core,” said Robbins.

The IoT market has been a long time target of Cisco, with the Jasper deal adding to the ParStream acquisition last year. The acquisition offered the opportunity for instant analysis of masses of data at the network edge with minimal infrastructural or OPEX repercussions, the company claimed.

Business Transformation, Cloud Enablement, Cost Reduction, Enterprise IT, News & Analysis, SDN, Software Defined Networking

SDN on the rise and cloud still not understood – survey

Dollar SignsResearch from Viavi Solutions has indicated SDN technologies are on the rise within enterprise organizations, but there also might be a number of organizations who are implementing the cloud for the wrong reasons.

In its ninth annual State of the Network study, the team highlighted enterprise organizations are increasing deployment of 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100 GbE), public and private cloud, and software-defined networking technologies. Two thirds of respondents indicated they had some kind of deployment in the production environment, and 35% have implemented SDN underlay.

“There is a growing trend of enterprise customers realizing how they can improve the operations of their network,” said Steve Brown, Director of Enterprise Solutions at Viavi. “It’s been a slow burner, but SDN is beginning to break through into the mainstream. While encouraging, the statistics are a little higher than we expected. After comparing the adoption rates from the last couple of years, we expected SDN to be around 50%, but the survey does highlight some real momentum in the industry on the whole.”

The findings also highlighted that while cloud adoption is continuing to rise, 90% have at least one application in the cloud and 28% said they have the majority, there is still a level of immaturity in understanding the perceived and realized benefits of cloud computing. Lower operating costs was listed as the top reason for the transition at 63%, while the faster delivery of new services and the ability to dynamically adapt to changes in business demands were the least popular reasons, both accounting for 39%.

“If you look at what the chief benefits which people are seeing, we’re seeing a lot of feedback on the CAPEX/OPEX reductions,” said Brown. “This is great, but that’s not really what the point of cloud is. Expenditure reduction is something which the top decision makers in the business want to see, it’s more of a tactical play. If this is the end objective these companies are not really seeing the promise of cloud and what makes me excited about cloud.

Deploying cloud

Top reasons for adopting the cloud

“The areas which I see the key benefits are the ones which are lowest on the results, delivering services faster and dynamically changing to meet the needs of the business. I found it quite surprising that these were quite low. The results show that the decision to enter the cloud for the majority of consumers is more tactical than a strategic decision.”

One conclusion that can be drawn from the findings is a lack of understanding of what the cloud can offer. Gartner’s ‘Cost Optimization Secrets’ highlighted the average cost reduction for companies implementing cloud propositions was just over 14%. While this is encouraging, whether cloud adoption would remain an attractive option for organizations if they knew expenditure would be reduced by just 14% remains to be seen.

“There’s more than just cost saving when adopting the cloud,” said Brown. “Are there savings, absolutely, but the majority don’t come upfront. If you’re going to be running applications which could see aggressive spikes, the flexibility of and agility of the cloud will reduce the cost. But at the same time it’s difficult to justify the cost savings because you may be taking on new projects due to the fact you have the ability to scale your capacity at a moment’s notice.

“Rather than thinking about it as a cost saver, hybrid cloud should be seen as an initiative enabler. Until this idea is recognised by the industry, adoption may continue to struggle to penetrate the mainstream.”

For Brown and the team at Viavi, the benefits of cloud computing are focused around the business capabilities which are enabled in the medium and long-term. Cloud offers companies the opportunity to react to diversifying market conditions faster and ensure products remain relevant on an on-going basis.

“In my own personal opinion, I would like to see people embrace a hybrid cloud model because it enables them to develop competitive edges,” said Brown. “This also justifies future investment in technology, it moves these new concepts and implementations from ‘nice to have’ to ‘must have’ as technology will then be one of the supporting pillars of the business strategy. Cloud has the ability to do this and to be a competitive enabler.”

AI, Artificial intelligence, CRM, Financial Results, Marc Benioff, News & Analysis, Salesforce

Marc Benioff backs AI as Salesforce reports 28% growth

Marc Benioff

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

Salesforce reported healthy results over the course of Q1, growing 28%, as CEO Marc Benioff backed AI as the next major growth driver, during the company’s quarterly earnings call.

While social and mobile has facilitated Salesforce growth in recent years, the team are backing artificial intelligence as the next major trend to take the company through the targeted $10 billion annual revenue target. Benioff highlighted that in the same way the company is now known for being a social and mobility brand, the ambition is for Salesforce to be perceived as “an AI first company”.

“When I look at kind of the next major trend for Salesforce and our industry that will drive tremendous growth is got to be artificial intelligence,” said Benioff. “And as we look out into the future and we start to look at extreme improvement and advances in artificial intelligence whether it’s machine learning, whether it’s deep learning, whether it’s machine intelligence itself, I think that those kind of capabilities appearing inside our applications that is going to be a major growth capability going forward.”

One of the newest product launches for the company, Salesforce Inbox, uses these AI and machine intelligence opportunities to gives companies a perspective on how they can be more efficient in the sales, service, and marketing processes. SalesforceIQ is another offering which uses the same capabilities as it has an artificial intelligence front end, whereas Benioff also highlighted Sales Cloud has a machine learning front end.

While others in the industry have been very vocal about their progress within the AI field, Salesforce has seemingly been sneaking in under the radar with additional acquisitions including Tempo AI and PredictionIO. SalesforceIQ, an AI-driven calendar app which can prioritize work schedules for sales employees, was incorporated into the product portfolio following the $390 million acquisition of RelateIQ in 2014. These acquisitions, as well as organic development, are aiding the company in adapting to what Benioff described as “an AI first world”.

Salesforce’s new efforts will focus on the new, digitally enabled customers and consumers, who could be seen to driving the transformation worldwide. This new generation is defined by technology and speed, as Benioff highlighted they want services faster and easier than ever before, as well as being ever more reliant on social and mobile technologies. Companies who do not adapt themselves to this new proposition but remain in a more traditional model are those who will struggle to remain competitive.

“We’re in the midst of a massive generational shift; a new generation of customers and consumers is clearly emerging,” said Benioff. “We have been calling them here at Salesforce C generation customers. I mean this is really part of a huge shift that’s happening in computing. We’ve gone from the first generation of computing which was very much about systems of record to the second generation which was systems of engagement we talked about that on these calls many times over the last 10 years.

“And we are clearly moving into this incredible world that the system of intelligence that’s all yielding these incredible systems of customers or C generation customers that are — that our customers are connecting to. And that’s we’re so excited about.”

In terms of financials, revenues for Q1 grew to nearly $2 billion, up 28% in constant currency. Sales Cloud demonstrated 15% year-over-year growth, Service Cloud grew 32%, Marketing Cloud grew 29%, whereas Apps Cloud and other business units grew 45%. Growth in Sales Cloud was the highest recorded in the five previous quarters, which Benioff attributing to a number of new innovations including its Lightning platform, where the team have recently released an updated government edition, as well as Pardot and SteelBrick capabilities.

The team are also raising 2017 revenue guidance to $8.16 billion to $8.2 billion, and are expecting revenues of between $2.005 billion to $2.015 billion in Q2.

“I’m also thrilled to announce we’re raising full-year revenue guidance $80 million raising the guidance we feel really excited about that, $8.2 billion is the high-end of our range and our current outlook puts us on its square path, look we are going to see now that we’re going to realize very shortly our $10 billion dream,” said Benioff. “This is amazing I think that one of the reasons that we are doing so well is because Oracle and SAP are doing so poorly in the cloud”

Enterprise IT, Opinion, VDI

5 Questions to Ask Your VDI Vendor

Contemplate. Business concept illustrationWhether you’re a mid-sized enterprise that’s work-from-home-friendly or a large corporation based largely on remote workers, there will come a time when you’ll want to consider how to optimize your workspace technology for the way your employees work. One solution is virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), a technology that provides a consistent desktop experience across devices and locales. First introduced in the mid-2000s, VDI has expanded the definition of the office to include everything from an Uber ride to a flight.

If you’re in the market for VDI, you have several options, but know there is no one size fits all solution. I’ve worked with thousands of organizations globally and have seen the different methods companies use to select their VDI solutions. In my experience, there are a handful of questions that can help you save time and money. Here are the top five questions I recommend you ask your prospective VDI providers:

  1. How do you envision the digital modern workspace?

The golden rule for any software salesman is to “sell the problem you’re solving, not the product.” Likewise, a VDI company should demonstrate an understanding of the modern worker and the business consumer. Out of 75 IT professionals, 48 percent expected to see their companies expand BYOD policies in 2016, according to a survey by our partner Workspot. Meaning, the modern worker is expecting companies to provide a secure, fast, and easy solution to fit their work needs no matter where they’re working. VDI is a fit for many types of workers, including IT pros and designers specializing in high-end CAD, PLM, and 2-D/3-D graphics.

You’ll want to work with a vendor who understands your vision for how VDI will address challenges specific to your business. Requesting a few case studies from the vendor will give you a sense of not only what the company can deliver, but also what they perceive as the value-adds for your business. If the results they are showcasing vary widely from what you’re trying to achieve, it may be best to look elsewhere for your VDI solution.

  1. What are the top three challenges businesses want to solve in the context of the modern workspace?

Any reputable vendor should be aware of and offer realistic solutions to issues like data security, workforce connectivity and inefficiency. Asking this question will give you an additional sense of the vendor’s proficiency in enterprise operations and specific use cases.

For example, if you’re a company in a regulation-heavy space (think health care, finance, military and government) one challenge may be ensuring secure connection whether the employee is an accountant in the U.S. or a high-end designer in Asia. VDI should be as secure as physical ware, and in fact, vendors have spent the last decade perfecting the translation of hardware functionality to the virtual desktop. Make sure the vendor is familiar with processes for integrating VDI, access and network security solutions, which are essential for creating a strong, and safe, virtual workspace.

Solving problems. Business conceptIn industries where employees often work off-site or in remote locations – like consulting or land surveying – a major challenge is keeping workers connected, while keeping it simple. One of the benefits of VDI is that it relieves IT of the tremendous burden of supporting personal devices and remote access for any employee who asks. It gives IT time back to invest in the network, after the potentially costly and lengthy process of implementation, of course. Given the possible challenges of set-up, your vendor should be able to speak to VDI’s value to technical staff – you’ll want this ammo in your bargaining arsenal.

Another issue VDI can address is productivity loss for workers in the field. For example, an insurance agent going out to accident sites will fill out several forms, and then return to the office just to fill out those forms again because the mobile form isn’t compatible with desktop. VDI lets the agent access the same form across devices. It’s helpful to ask which companies your vendor has worked with in the past to gauge their understanding of areas for productivity gain. If they have several customers in your industry, they may have more insight into the myriad of ways VDI can help your organization run more efficiently. Ask: How do you solve historical challenges around cost, complexity, and performance? Then listen for a detailed and tailored answer.

  1. What are the main challenges in deploying VDI and how do you support the organization throughout implementation?

The answer to this question is critical to your success integrating VDI technology into your business operations. Some vendors offer to deploy VDI that day, while others will expect you to wait a few months – or many months – for proof of concept. Some will promise scalability, and others will demonstrate it. Finally, some will work with you shoulder-to-shoulder, while others will take a more hands-off approach.

You should consider your preferences carefully when choosing a VDI vendor. Since problems arrive at the worst of times, I believe that VDI providers should also have experts available at any hour to ensure application delivery and troubleshoot errors. Others may feel budget or familiarity with the company are top priority. Whatever your must-have is, make sure to identify it early on. Otherwise you may feel overwhelmed by choices that in many ways look identical.

  1. What are two of the unique selling points/advantages of your biggest competitor?

This question may throw your prospective vendor off a bit, but their answer can be quite telling. If your provider can be open and honest about their competitors, they are more likely to be honest about their shortfalls. Keep in mind they’ll probably also counter with their own unique features. The best companies will have a deep understanding of other products in the sector, enabling them to evaluate and develop their own product more effectively.

  1. What is your product roadmap?

You’ll also want to ask about the company’s roadmap and how it may shift in response to competition or the company’s own goals. We’re seeing the complete transformation of the daily life of the average worker and technology is improving across the board. These changes are sure to have an impact on the VDI technology of tomorrow.

What the impact is largely depends on the company in question. Some companies are smaller and more nimble – they’ll emphasize performance and cost-effectiveness.  Others are legacy, which tend to build based on a deeply entrenched model of doing things. Whether or not the standard works for a given technology, you can be sure the legacy organization will have resources to spare.

Both big and small dogs are getting in on VDI, but the best option is largely subjective. With these questions, you’ll be able to assess what each vendor brings to the table and make the choice that will bring your workforce into the future.

Written by Ruben Spruijt, Field CTO at Atlantis Computing