Improving visibility into end-user computing [Q&A]

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic we've seen greater focus on workplace flexibility with many employees being in the office for fewer days each week.

But to make this work, enterprises must be able to track the state of their end-user computing to understand their access, performance and user satisfaction.

We spoke to Amitabh Sinha, CEO and founder of Workspot, to discuss how IT teams can get deep visibility into their end-user computing state and users' satisfaction, and take action to enhance their virtual desktop.

BN: Why is virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) so in demand for the new workforce?

AS: Recent research reveals that 82 percent of Fortune 500 companies now offer workplace flexibility, with the most common arrangement being a 'hybrid work' model with two to three days required in the office. This means that employees are working on and off-premises, from the office to their home to public places, even while traveling. Endpoint security was designed for a workforce that would be in an office where zero-day security patches could be applied right away. User mobility and the work-from-anywhere trend makes patching difficult, and opens up the organization to increased risk of cybersecurity attacks.

Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) enables secure remote access to corporate applications and data from anywhere on any device. However, traditional VDI has many challenges. Both end-users and IT have expressed some persistent challenges with traditional VDI. End-users are often dissatisfied with the performance of their virtual desktops. And IT struggles with the hardware, operation, and management costs and complexity of traditional VDI. Today's enterprise is looking for a modern take on their VDI, one that addresses the needs of the changing workforce.

BN: What are the challenges of end-user computing from an end-user perspective?

AS: Traditional VDI tools were built for the on-premises enterprise and not the new multi-cloud and hybrid era. Many organizations try solving this issue by moving their desktop workloads to the cloud, but most VDI solutions on the market are built on an outdated architecture that did not contemplate today's world of hybrid multi-cloud computing, adding further expenses and complexity. Organizations that take the lift-and-shift approach often find themselves experiencing significant downtime, causing loss of productivity and frustration among users. Most of these companies often don't even have visibility into their users’ experience and how it is changing over time with frequent updates to their system and applications.

BN: What is end-user computing (EUC) and how does next-generation VDI play a role in it?

AS: EUC refers to the technologies that allow employees to access their applications, devices, and data to perform their daily jobs, such as VDI. The on-demand enterprise requires flexible and agile EUC solutions to support a wide range of new workstyles and an ever-changing mix of applications and workloads. Thus, the new approach to EUC has become the on-demand enterprise, enabled by new, cloud-native VDI platforms -- a solution that is built on the cloud and for the cloud.

Cloud-native VDI forgoes the complexities of legacy hardware, streamlining the deployment and management process for IT teams without compromising security, while also putting the end-users first.

BN: Why do organizations need to track their users' satisfaction?

AS: In the days of traditional VDI, IT was forced to make trade-offs that affected end-user satisfaction in order to attain the security benefits virtual desktops offer. But this approach is no longer effective for the modern workforce. End-user productivity can be dramatically affected by poor performance and downtime, with unhappy users simply leaving for another work opportunity elsewhere.

Organizations must be able to track the state of their end-user computing to understand their access, performance, and satisfaction. With this type of data, organizations can ensure they are delivering flexible, scalable, performance-ready, and secure end-user access to assets.

BN: What does Workspot do and how does it address end-user satisfaction?

AS: Workspot is a cloud-native VDI platform built for today's hybrid multi-cloud computing environment that enables IT teams to quickly implement cloud desktops, applications, and workstations, both efficiently and quickly -- no matter where users reside in the world. Our VDI platform includes several unique capabilities, including Workspot Trends, which gathers user satisfaction from in-product end-user surveys from every session. IT teams can use this data to understand each performance rating and uncover virtual desktop pools that expose weaker end-user satisfaction ratings, and then compare them to pools with higher ratings. By comparing the two pools, IT teams can achieve insight into several key, specific conditions, from network performance and characteristics to memory usage to round-trip time, etc. From there, IT teams are able to quickly resolve the issue at the pool or individual level, oftentimes before end-users become frustrated or dissatisfied.

Workspot Trends uniquely offers continuous collection and instantaneous analysis of millions of data points across gateways, endpoints, virtual desktop agents, multiple clouds, and enterprise connectors. It can also add historical and current end-user satisfaction responses to its performance analysis algorithm. Ultimately, it gives IT teams a tool to view the end-user experience and receive actionable insights to improve it over time.

Workspot Watch is another offering that streamlines end-user computing. It is an engine that collects real-time data and analyzes VDI health to take observability to new levels. With Workspot Watch, IT teams receive actionable insights to more easily control costs and enable a far better end-user experience.

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