DaaS – Digital IT News

Hybrid Work Model Implementations Eased with VMware

Taylor Graham — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 22:10:29 +0000

A majority of companies have implemented or plan to implement a hybrid work model moving forward.⁽¹⁾ However, supporting a hybrid work model creates new speed bumps for IT. VMware outlined how autonomous workspaces powered by data science will ease this burden. It also unveiled innovations across its Anywhere Workspace platform that will inject automation into organizations’ end-user computing environments, enabling IT teams to do more with less.

“The reality of hybrid work is each employee, and each device is a front door into the organization and its resources. IT must not only make that front door secure, but also welcoming as employees access apps from anywhere. The only way IT teams will be able to support hybrid work is by implementing simplified, unified, and automated processes,” said Shankar Iyer, senior vice president and general manager, End-User Computing, VMware. “Autonomous Workspaces represent the next evolution of managing digital workspaces, and VMware is once again pioneering the path forward for organizations.”

Journey to Autonomous Workspaces

According to Gartner®, “By 2027, unified endpoint management and digital employee experience tools will converge to drive autonomous endpoint management, reducing human effort by at least 40%.”⁽²⁾At VMware Explore 2022 US, VMware will outline the journey of digital workspace from being manual and task-centric to an outcomes-driven autonomous workspace. The future of hybrid work will drive an evolution of the digital workspace – one that injects data science and proactive automations across endpoint management, security and end-user experience. This will enable a context-aware autonomous workspace that delivers a few primary outcomes:

Self-configuring: Workspaces are configured to a desired state instead of constantly monitoring for changes and enforcing reactive policies.
Self-healing: The solution intelligently detect and isolate end-user experience incidents, accelerate change management, and automatically remediate issues to normal working state.
Self-securing: The solution can take proactive actions to better secure workspace access, quarantine apps or devices, and remediate anomalies to enable a return to desired posture.

Innovations Across Anywhere Workspace

VMware Anywhere Workspace will include all tools needed to deliver autonomous workspaces.

At VMware Explore, VMware unveiled how it is advancing self-configuring, self-healing and self-securing outcomes across four key technology areas that are delivered by the Anywhere Workspace platform:

VDI and DaaS
Digital Employee Experience
Unified Endpoint Management
Security

VDI and DaaS

Hybrid work is driving demand for multi-cloud VDI. VMware is introducing a next generation of VMware Horizon Cloud that will enable multi-cloud agility and flexibility. This new release represents a major update to Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure that can dramatically simplify the infrastructure that needs to be deployed inside customer environments, reducing infrastructure costs in some cases by over 70% while increasing scalability and reliability of VMware’s DaaS platform.⁽³⁾

The new “Thin Edge” infrastructure continues to leverage the Horizon Control plane–a VMware-managed service that includes hybrid support and features like app management, universal brokering, image management, monitoring, and more. Plus, this next-gen Horizon Cloud is API-driven, so customers, partners, and ISVs will be able to build tools, services, and automations. Customers with Horizon subscription licenses are entitled to the new and improved Horizon Cloud at no additional charge.

VMware will also introduce VMware Horizon Managed Desktop – a flexible, cloud-hosted service that delivers fully-managed virtual desktops and apps with choice of deployment options: on-premises, hybrid or public cloud. This will better enable secure access for a distributed workforce for wherever work takes them. The solution relieves IT teams from time-consuming operations, provides cost-management with predictable OpEx spending, speeds deployments for faster time to value, and rapidly scales to meet changing workforce demands.

Additionally, Google and VMware are collaborating to bring access to any app on any device for the hybrid workforce. Organizations will be able to use hundreds of certified endpoints to connect to Horizon virtual desktops and apps. And now, with Google Chromebook as a validated endpoint, industries like healthcare can benefit from delivering a great user experience for more secure access to corporate resources.

“We rely on VMware Horizon to support access to corporate resources for our employees,” said Yehoshua Israel, IT director, Aperion Care, Inc. “In conversation with the Google product team, we learned that ChromeOS is a good fit to connect to Horizon for our environment, and our time from unboxing to ready for deployment is about three minutes. Using a managed guest session, the ChromeOS system is simple to use, locked down, HIPAA-compliant, and inexpensive. The transition from Windows-based laptops to Chromebooks with Horizon has been seamless.”

Digital Employee Experience

VMware is broadening the coverage of its Digital Employee Experience solutions beyond Workspace ONE UEM managed devices to now include VMware Horizon and third-party managed and unmanaged devices. This will result in increased support of remote, hybrid and frontline personas.

And, to support the rising number of devices used by frontline employees, VMware is introducing a Digital Employee Experience Management (DEEM) solutions pack for customers with frontline deployments. These out-of-the box dashboards span ROI, shared-device usage, device loss, critical application performance, and more, to measure and improve mission-critical deployments.

Finally, VMware Workspace ONE is introducing DEEM Guided Root Cause Analysis capabilities. With the increase in hybrid work, organizations have struggled to scale the helpdesk to support more devices, apps, and networks. With this new feature, machine learning algorithms will help IT correlate all the relevant data points to recommend possible causes with probability assigned; enabling IT to solve issues more quickly, create automations to prevent other users from experiencing the issue, and restore productivity for impacted employees.

Unified Endpoint Management (UEM)

VMware continues to roll out advanced UEM capabilities now supporting multi-platform automation and orchestration with the expansion of Workspace ONE Freestyle Orchestrator to mobile devices and third-party apps. Freestyle Orchestrator – a modern, no-/low-code automation framework in UEM – provides support for Windows and Mac desktop operating systems. Since its launch, the tool has seen a significant adoption with more than 26 million automation runs that are designed to help IT teams eliminate complex and manual configurations tasks. Freestyle Orchestrator continues to offer administrators the flexibility to create these automation workflows to fit specific process requirements for their organization, and now with the extended platform support, expected to further increase IT efficiency and productivity.

VMware is also driving innovation by adding platform breadth of support and depth of management in its industry-recognized UEM solution. Additional UEM enhancements now include availability of multi-user mode for Windows OS – a use case that has seen significant adoption in both frontline shared use and in-office device loaner or hoteling scenarios as employees return to work. VMware is also announcing availability in this quarter of a distribution-agnostic Linux endpoint solution, XR Hub for AR/VR devices; and Tech Previews of its next-gen Windows Update management, support for new Chrome OS APIs for Education, work profile on Android AMAPI, and a dynamic, data-driven UI for iOS and Windows day-1 new policy support.

Workspace Security

Earlier this year, VMware announced a key innovation in the form of Workspace ONE Mobile Threat Defense. Today’s mobile threat landscape is diverse, and mobile workstyles call for specialized protection from phishing and application, device, and rogue network originated threats. VMware Workspace ONE Mobile Threat Defense, an add-on to the Workspace ONE UEM platform, takes mobile protection to the next level. Specifically, the solution addresses application-based threats, Web and content vulnerabilities, Zero-day threats and device vulnerabilities, and more.

VMware Cross-Cloud services Helps Customers Navigate the Multi-Cloud Era

At VMware Explore 2022, VMware is unveiling new and enhanced offerings for VMware Cross-Cloud services to help customers navigate the multi-cloud era with freedom, flexibility and security. VMware Cross-Cloud services is a portfolio of cloud services that deliver a unified and simplified way to build, operate, access, and better secure any application on any cloud from any device. VMware Cross-Cloud service pillars include 1) App Platform 2) Cloud Management 3) Cloud & Edge Infrastructure 4) Security & Networking, and 5) Anywhere Workspace.

About VMware Explore

VMware Explore is an evolution of the company’s flagship conference, VMworld. VMware Explore aims to be the industry’s go-to-event for all things multi-cloud. This year, it will feature industry-led solution and technical sessions, an extensive ecosystem of 90% of the top cloud partners, a thriving marketplace of multi-cloud ISVs and several networking events.

This article may contain hyperlinks to non-VMware websites that are created and maintained by third parties who are solely responsible for the content on such websites.

Zippia, Future of Work 2022 Hybrid Work Statistics, February 2022
Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Unified Endpoint Management Tools, Tom Cipolla, Dan Wilson, Chris Silva, Craig Fisler, August 1, 2022
VMware Internal Analysis, Beta customer internal cost estimator, August 2022

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Honeywell Teams with IGEL to Deploy Advanced Virtualization and Process Automation

Leigh Porter — Thu, 28 Oct 2021 18:24:57 +0000

Honeywell announced it will work with IGEL to deploy solutions for Experion® Process Knowledge System (PKS) users through the IGEL Ready Program. The Linux-based solution, Honeywell’s Universal Thin Client Operating System, will allow Experion PKS users to access an ecosystem of cutting-edge hardware and software, delivering a powerful, productive and secure end-user experience with advanced virtualization and process automation.

As industrial organizations look for more efficient ways to approach control system engineering, the need for a solution that can be adopted incrementally and used interchangeably with existing systems and infrastructure is of paramount importance. The Universal Thin Client Operating System will allow Experion PKS users to securely deploy a purpose-built thin client operating system with a rich management experience, while providing endpoint devices the peripheral and connectivity features needed for Experion PKS.

“Leveraging the IGEL Ready program, this collaboration will further advance Honeywell’s position as an industry leader in process control virtualization. IGEL’s edge operating system provides a secure, Linux-based thin client platform for Experion PKS while providing rich remote management capabilities that improve the lifecycle experience,” said Joe Bastone, Director, Experion Offering Management.

“By teaming together, Honeywell and IGEL are better able to deliver world-class solutions that meet our mutual customers’ requirements, as the IGEL Ready program was designed to foster collaboration and joint-solution development,” said Divya Saggar, Director, IGEL Ready.

The solution provides a secure experience for end-users using virtualization while significantly reducing the challenges traditionally associated with deploying thin client technology. The Universal Thin Client Operating System also allows for much stronger administration and management capabilities, which in turn allows users to save time and labor costs associated with maintaining their control systems.

For more information about the Universal Thin Client Operating System and Experion, https://www.honeywellprocess.com/experionpkshive.

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Flexxible IT Delivers Desktop-as-a-Service Anywhere with FlexxDesktop

Olivia Rowan — Wed, 27 Oct 2021 23:32:34 +0000

Flexxible IT has officially announced the release of FlexxDesktop, a Desktop as a Service (DaaS) solution where edge computing and cloud computing converge. This allows virtual desktops to run anywhere or everywhere. With the end user’s experience at the center, FlexxDesktop offers DaaS on the users’ terms, with no up-front investment, and enables the seamless transition from any platform to any platform, whether the data center or the cloud.

“Flexxible IT has been a leader in the DaaS space since 2008, and we are excited to expand our reach to support customers staying or moving to any vendor or any cloud,” said Sebastian Prat, CEO at Flexxible IT. “We see FlexxDesktop as the future of DaaS, enabling the enterprise to build their own DaaS solution on their terms where they can pay-as-they-go and transition to any vendor or cloud at their pace. It allows the enterprise to choose the vendors they see fit and to migrate seamlessly between them.”

FlexxDesktop is available today in a subscription pricing model, so it allows enterprises to migrate existing environments to any cloud with ease at a cost that is OPEX friendly. Many DaaS vendors lock customers to a single platform or cloud. The cloud may not be feasible for some, and the customer will still need the data center. FlexxDesktop enables DaaS to enhance the digital experience for any end-user through a simplified management architecture built for any cloud or any data center.

“FlexxDesktop enables enterprises to have a choice,” said Pete Downing, CMO at Flexxible IT. “DaaS is complex and FlexxDesktop aims to simplify the day-to-day management as well as give enterprises the choice to use any vendor, their data center, their edge, and any cloud.”

Flexxible IT is giving an overview and highlight on the key features of FlexxDesktop via a webinar on November 3, 2021, at 11:00 AM EST. You can register here.

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Dizzion Announces New Managed Desktop Offering on IBM Cloud to Help Enterprises Manage Their Remote Workforce

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Veridium Joins IGEL Ready Program as a Technology Partner

Taylor Graham — Fri, 21 May 2021 19:56:07 +0000

Veridium, a leading developer of frictionless, passwordless authentication solutions, and IGEL, provider of the next-gen edge OS for cloud workspaces, announced that Veridium has joined the IGEL Ready program as a technology partner. IGEL Ready is an ecosystem of cutting-edge hardware, software and peripheral solutions that have been verified for use with the IGEL OS to deliver a powerful, productive, and secure user experience.

As a validated solution in the security segment of the IGEL Ready program, VeridiumID delivers passwordless authentication for VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), DaaS (Desktop as a Service) and cloud workspaces. It enables organizations to eliminate passwords and/or legacy OTP token technology for user authentication. This enhances security and user experience while also reducing operating costs. The software-only platform has a front-end mobile application available from public stores or as a software development kit (SDK) and enables a broad variety of explicit and implicit authenticators to meet all customer and regulatory requirements.

“Veridium is excited to join the active and growing community of IGEL Ready partners,” said Ismet Geri, Chief Executive Officer, Veridium. “Device authentication is a critical component to any security strategy and is particularly important at the endpoint – whether in the cloud, VDI or DaaS. By validating VeridiumID for use with IGEL OS-powered devices, we are helping to provide a simple, yet powerful layer of security to safeguard applications and data from growing cyber threats.”

“The future of work requires secure access to cloud workspaces from anywhere on any device,” said Jed Ayres, Chief Executive Officer, IGEL. “Logging into corporate resources needs to be done without friction and with supreme confidence. IGEL and Veridium offer a true enterprise grade passwordless experience. We’re pleased that Veridium has joined our growing network of more than 100 IGEL Ready partners focused on delivering the industry’s best end user compute solutions.”

Now more than ever, providing customers and their employees with reliable, frictionless access to tools, applications, and services is critical for businesses continuity and growth. The IGEL Ready program ensures that partner applications are validated and shared, and that their customers have access to updated and secure software. This rapidly growing ecosystem of over 100 technology partners enables customers to consider compatible devices and partner applications across a range of categories in the customer-facing IGEL Ready Showcase.

To learn more and start the application process, visit igel.com/partners/technology-partners/.

To explore the IGEL Ready ecosystem of solutions, visit igel.com/ready.

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Dizzion Announces New Managed Desktop Offering on IBM Cloud to Help Enterprises Manage Their Remote Workforce

Leigh Porter — Tue, 13 Apr 2021 15:52:45 +0000

Dizzion, Inc. announced a new managed desktop offering on IBM Cloud designed to assist enterprises in managing their workforce by making it easier for employees to work remotely in a secured and collaborative environment.

Dizzion’s new managed desktops on IBM Cloud offering provides an upgraded Desktop as a Service environment for VMware Horizon on IBM Cloud users and is ideal for enterprise IT organizations looking for a long-term remote work solution that addresses performance, security and compliance challenges.

Dizzion’s new managed desktop offering on IBM Cloud has been designed to leverage VMware Horizon and other technologies to deliver applications, files, corporate network access, security and settings to an end-user’s computer from network-accessed cloud resources, as opposed to the end-user device itself. The process will offer an optimized experience for employees who work remotely and will enable access from internet-connected devices. The new offering will leverage IBM Cloud as the underlying cloud architecture, including servers, storage, networking, and security, with Dizzion as the managed cloud desktop service.

“Dizzion’s managed desktop offering for IBM Cloud can help address a high-priority IT challenge facing a wide range of organizations in 2021,” says Steve Prather, CEO at Dizzion. “Customers will receive the enterprise-level performance and protection they demand. Employees working with media-intense software from home will find their heavy applications optimized for maximum productivity. In-the-know users will have their confidential data secured when working from remote locations. Plus, with IBM Cloud as the delivery engine and VMware Horizon as the desktop virtualization platform, customers will be able to effectively respond to unexpected change.”

Dizzion customer Arise Virtual Solutions, a global customer experience outsourcing specialist, adopted Dizzion’s managed desktop offering on IBM Cloud and realized success using the solution. Arise expanded to 1,500 desktops, citing PCI-DSS compliance and strong performance levels when using customer service software as differentiators, which enabled the company to win the full outsourced customer service business from a well-known global retailer.

“The Arise® Platform is a premier provider of virtual-first customer support BPO solutions that enable brands to be there for their customers. Leveraging an expansive network of gig-economy service partners, Arise uses innovation to change the way brands think about customer care,” said Ken Braatz, Vice President of Technology Operations at Arise Virtual Solutions. “With the resulting agility, performance and compliance of the new Dizzion Managed DaaS, we proved another level of capability to our clients, which led to increased demand and corresponding expansion. Our clients and service partners depend on us to deliver the optimal customer experience solution while securing their sensitive data. With Dizzion Managed DaaS, we are able to do both.”

Dizzion is leveraging IBM’s Cloud Engagement Fund, established as part of IBM’s $1B investment into its partner ecosystem, to accelerate the company’s global expansion through access to technical resources and cloud credits that support the migration of client workloads to hybrid cloud environments, including IBM Cloud.

“By working with Hybrid Cloud Ecosystem partners like Dizzion, we can help to develop and offer new solutions that address evolving customer and partner challenges. Dizzion’s managed desktop offering for IBM Cloud is engineered to help enterprises address the need to manage more complex remote work environments,” said Willie M. Tejada, IBM Chief Developer Advocate and GM ISV/Build Ecosystem. “Supported by IBM’s Cloud Engagement Fund, Dizzion will be able to scale their offering to help expand operations to help enterprises globally.”

Dizzion’s managed desktop offering on IBM Cloud is available immediately and will replace the Horizon Cloud on IBM Cloud Service, with current customers transitioning to the new offering without having to alter their desktop images, protocols or endpoint devices. Dizzion Managed DaaS offers HIPAA, PCI-DSS, GDPR and SOC 2 Type II-compliant services with a zLink BYOD option that extends compliance to personal end-user device use cases. The offering will be available in the United States, Europe and Asia, with plans to expand globally in 2021.

Dizzion is part of IBM’s Hybrid Cloud Ecosystem, an initiative to support partners of all types — whether they build on, service or resell IBM technologies and platforms — to help clients manage and modernize workloads with Red Hat OpenShift for any cloud environment, including the IBM public cloud. The IBM public cloud is the industry’s most secure and open public cloud for business. With its security leadership, enterprise-grade capabilities and support for open source technologies, the IBM public cloud is designed to differentiate and extend on hybrid cloud capabilities for enterprise workloads.

For more information visit https://www.dizzion.com/managed-daas-on-ibm-cloud/.

VMware and VMware Horizon are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions.

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IGEL and Wipro collaborate as part of System Integrator Partner Program

Leigh Porter — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 19:03:54 +0000

IGEL, announced an agreement with Wipro Limited, a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company to drive business continuity and accelerate the delivery of cloud workspaces within today’s hybrid work environments that include a mix of remote and on-premises workers. Through this new agreement, Wipro will leverage IGEL OS, alongside cloud workspace platforms from Citrix and Microsoft, as part of Wipro virtuadesk, its Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) solution.

“With businesses working to stay abreast of the changes in the economy brought on by COVID-19, it has become critical that they leverage cloud workspaces like VDI and DaaS in a secure way,” said Balaji Subramanian, Senior Vice President and Global Channel Chief, IGEL. “We are pleased to be adding Wipro to our growing network of system integrator partners around the globe. Teaming with them helps our mutual customers reduce costs while quickly scaling their remote work environments in a way that enhances end user productivity and security.”

Purpose-built for enterprise access to virtual and cloud-powered environments of all types, IGEL OS is ideally suited to be the edge OS for environments accessing Windows through a well-managed data center or cloud deployment. IGEL OS is also hardware-agnostic, supporting any compatible x86 endpoint so enterprises can extend the life of aging hardware while standardizing a heterogeneous desktop estate with easy-to-manage policy control and increased security. “By leveraging IGEL OS to deliver its secure cloud workspace offerings, Wipro is enabling enterprise customers to modernize and transform their endpoint computing environments,” continued Subramanian.

Wipro virtuadesk, is an appliance-based DaaS solution that provides accelerators for cloud readiness assessment, cloud migration and application life cycle management, leveraging Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Internet of Things, mobility and analytics. Wipro virtuadesk creates an ecosystem for improved employee engagement and collaboration through simpler IT.

“Today, companies must be prepared to facilitate anytime, anywhere access to systems and information for employees across business units and geographies,” said Satish Y, Vice President, Cloud & Infrastructure Services, Wipro Limited. “Technology is a key enabler of this, but it must also have a global focus. This combines the right mix of global compute and storage capabilities with more subtle elements, such as personalized and configurable services, robust service level agreements, and language capabilities to accommodate the global talent spread. IGEL is helping us deliver our re-imagined solutions, like Wipro virtuadesk, that create best-in-class virtual desktop experiences to enhance the employee experience, both in the cloud and on-premises, while helping businesses achieve their desired strategic outcomes.”

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