Conversations with Customers: Cloud VDI Performance, SLA, Flat Rate Pricing
When I spoke with this major financial services firm about cloud VDI for financial services, they were very clear about their priorities as they evaluate alternatives to physical desktops and legacy VDI. As an early adopter of legacy VDI, it’s an understatement to say that they’ve experienced their share of pain managing a complex, on-premises VDI implementation, not to mention the challenges around performance for remote users and overall reliability. Consequently, they are focused on simplifying their IT infrastructure, improving the user experience and ensuring high availability for all their corporate desktops and apps. Moreover, physical desktop users are tethered to their offices, at a time when flexibility and mobility are key selling points for new hires, particularly Millenials. Like many companies in the financial services industry, this firm is actively seeking the right cloud-based solutions as part of their IT strategy, and while they are convinced cloud adoption is the right way to go to achieve flexibility and business agility benefits, they have concerns about the unpredictability of cloud compute costs.
Simplicity for IT, Amazing Performance for Users
You may have heard us talk about how “insanely simple” our cloud VDI service is, and it’s true that simplicity is a hallmark of the value we deliver to our customers. However, it’s also important to know that while we help simplify IT infrastructure with a turnkey service, the service is also enterprise-ready, meaning it is highly customizable so large enterprise organizations can use their existing Windows 10 images, their own GPOs, security policies, custom MFA, and custom image management tools. With our cloud VDI for financial services, there’s no need for you to play by other people’s rules, and that’s huge when you think about the retraining effort for IT staff that other solutions would require. So, simplicity – yes. Enterprise-ready – yes! The firm is already envisioning how they can put IT resources to work on projects that are more strategic to company growth.
To solve the problem of latency for users who are remote from the firm’s data centers, Workspot would place Windows 10 desktops in the Azure region closest to every user. That’s how they can get performance that is so good, it often surpasses physical desktop performance, and that’s a great productivity booster!
Desktop SLA: Just Walk Away
Financial services firms are subject to an intense regulatory environment, and one can imagine the hoops this IT team must jump through to keep their legacy solution up and running to meet compliance requirements. The resources required to micro-manage on-premises VDI and physical desktops are vast and the opportunity cost high. Realizing this, and understanding Workspot’s cloud VDI capabilities, this team is eager to transfer ownership of the desktop SLA to their trusted virtual desktop provider. Workspot’s SLA for our cloud desktops is 99.95% – that’s three and a half nines availability they cannot achieve internally. With Workspot they can bank on it!
Surprise! Flat-Rate Pricing
One of the biggest concerns for companies moving workloads to the cloud is the variable cost for cloud compute. Each month brings a new opportunity for an unpleasant surprise when the cloud bill comes. This firm was no less concerned about this issue, especially given the huge number of users they support globally. A key differentiator for Workspot and a really important feature to our customers is our flat-rate pricing model. You receive a single bill from Workspot that includes a flat fee for your cloud desktops and cloud workstations. That flat fee includes the cost of the Azure resources running the desktops and workstations, and that’s the nicest surprise these IT leaders had heard all day! Not only is your cloud desktop pricing totally predictable, but we also make it easy for large enterprises like this one to charge back cloud desktop costs to various departments. Our cloud VDI flat fee model also includes our Go-Live Deployment Services as well as standard support.
What About DIY VDI?
Some companies come to us ready to take advantage of our comprehensive, turnkey cloud VDI service. Others find our turnkey solution attractive, but they want to understand the deployment and ROI details if they bring their own Azure (BYOA) to our service. Still others are weighing whether other cloud solutions, what we refer to as “broker as a service”, and “do-it-yourself VDI” make sense for them; after all, most large enterprises do have fairly hefty IT resources to tackle DIY VDI projects. We’ve run financial models for all these approaches, and we’re happy to share those numbers. Based on the data and the ongoing feedback we receive from our customers, we strongly believe that our customers benefit most when they take advantage of our turnkey service. Even if you have the IT team to undertake DIY VDI, why would you want to? Fast time-to-value – through our tightly managed customer success process – is something that any of the DIY implementation scenarios cannot achieve. Moreover, simplified, single-pane-of-glass management and the ability to scale vertically and horizontally across cloud regions are benefits of Workspot’s cloud VDI for financial services that are producing transformational results for our customers. Other solutions don’t come close. Now you can use all those wonderful IT people more strategically.
What’s Next?
Take a look at our G.E.T. Framework and map your requirements to see how various approaches to virtual desktops score, then, schedule a demo and let’s talk about the possibilities for your firm!
