The fifth annual Login VSI Summit 2021 was held virtually on September 30th. It was billed to include “thought-provoking speakers and leading EUC experts from around the world” and did not disappoint. Members of the Tricerat staff attended several keynotes from the event. Below is a recap of four highlight presentations from the day.
Presenter: Michael Kent, CTO of Login VSI
As businesses seek to get back to the strategic roadmaps that are core to their business, a new aspect of End-User/Employee experience will be key to that success.
There are so many interdependencies between data systems and IT is responsible for understanding the connections between them. As companies continue to move their systems into the cloud, understanding what is the “right” answer is unique to each company, and requires organizations to make sure to measure the effectiveness of their tools to ensure they make intelligent decisions. This requires a complete understanding of your own workflows and your own footprint. Not every solution is right for your organization, so don’t just pick what is sexy at the moment.
End users don’t care about their CPU comparison and load - this is an issue with cloud-based tools. When IT does their job right and the tools work, they’re invisible. And when they do it wrong, everything is their fault. This is a dialogue that must be changed. For IT professionals: don’t be invisible. Be the change-maker! You can do this by delivering for end users by creating relationships with them and showing that you understand the end user experience. For example, when you call an end user who has a printing issue through the virtual channel, don’t just tell them to reboot – know exactly what their issue is right away by having it monitored. This builds trust and makes for a better relationship.
Another area where IT professionals have influence is in digital transformative initiatives. Less than 4% of company digital transformation initiatives are completed and can take up to 10 years to finish. IT professionals need to draw a line in the sand and start to measure tools so that you can move faster and smarter – be able to prove you’re improving the company with the tools you’ve implemented.
We are past the point of IT being an infrastructure delivery system. IT is not just the tech, but the people that are closest to the system that know how to move the needle because you see interdependencies between systems. For example, IT can see security risks because they know where sensitive data such as credit card numbers is stored on the database.
In summary – be an agent of change, honor the end user, show the end user that their experience is understood, and view the EUX as a change-enabler.
Presenters: Ruben Spruijt & Christiaan Brinkhoff, Founders of VDI Like a Pro
VDI Like a PRO is an authority when it comes to independent market research in the End User Computing (EUC) space. In this session, they spoke about the results of their survey, including Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), Desktop as a Service (DaaS), public cloud, single session and multi-session Operating Systems, and the key EUC initiatives for 2022 and beyond. Here are some highlights of their survey results from 1600 participants:
As they concluded with their relevant findings from the survey, Christiaan laid out the future of EUC developments from his point of view:
Presenter: Brian Madden, CTO of VMware EUC
We all know VDI got a “boost” due to the pandemic, but is that a one-time thing, or permanent? And what about this whole “future of work” and hybrid working? Is that better for VDI or worse? Brian took a look at how VDI will evolve over the next few years, and how it will fit into the broader EUC landscape moving forward.
It’s no secret that on-prem VDI grew over the last year. More cloud-based VDI is being purchased as a younger generation of workers want a digital workspace. So, what does a digital workspace provide?
Looking at all of this, what does a widows desktop provide? It mostly provides the same things as a digital workspace. And VDI takes the digital workspace that was windows desktop and allows it to be accessible from anywhere. In 2021, VDI is still the easiest way to “package” a corporate workspace and is so popular because it is a lift and shift model that can move your desktop anywhere with you and the entire workspace is now secure with tech that just works.
As we reflect on VDI, there are some main points that stand out. Using VDI to extend Windows works, and VDI isn’t truly transformative as it’s the same desktop, same apps, and same Windows just delivered virtually. The pandemic has cause something of a VDI hyper-evolution. The industry is moving from unified endpoint management (UEM) to employee experience (EX), which intersects with digital learning, analytics, surveys/engagement and future of work.
According to Brian, here are some EUC trends that we could see over the next 3-5 years:
