TechTalk Rethinking the Device Lifecycle for the Distributed Workforce
New ways of working require new approaches to devices.
By Insight Editor / 8 Dec 2020 / Topics: Devices Virtualization
By Insight Editor / 8 Dec 2020 / Topics: Devices Virtualization
As organizations consider a long-term transition to a hybrid work environment, they must revisit past IT practices — especially their device strategy. Listen to Joe Flynn and Scott Pickles discuss why virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is a vital component of a future-ready device environment.
To experience this week’s episode, listen on the player above, watch the conversation below, or scroll down to read a complete transcript. You can also subscribe to Insight TechTalk on Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Audio transcript:
Published December 8, 2020
JOE
Thank you for joining us on today's Tech Talk. My name is Joe Flynn, director of technical architecture within Insight's Connected Workforce. I am joined today by Scott Pickles. Scott, would you like to introduce yourself please?
SCOTT
Sure. Hello, this is Scott Pickles I'm the vice president for our enterprise business here in the central U.S. Great to know you Joe.
JOE
Thank you Scott. Now I am glad we joined; we talk a lot lately it seems (chuckles) more than before.
SCOTT
We do.
JOE
And so in today's Tech Talk we’re going to be concentrating on the shift to remote work and what we are seeing with how companies keep people connected. And this time we're not talking about collaboration we've seem to talk about a lot of collaboration in the past. So outside of keeping them connected, but we're also seeing how the shift has forced companies to rethink device life cycle.
So, since many workforces have shifted to the remote work, Scott what are some ways that you're seeing businesses keeping their workforces connected?
SCOTT
Yeah, so, Joe, I don't think that we need to rehash the past…
JOE
Yeah.
SCOTT
Kind of what got us here. Back in April, I think it was an overnight, it seemed like an overnight excursion that companies had to divert their employees and to work from home type environment. In most cases, a lot of those employees really didn't have the right gear, the right equipment, the right technology, they were working on thin clients in the office or desktops in the office. And so, in some cases you saw a lot of companies send that equipment home with their employees. We did have a fairly strong workforce that had laptops and notebooks, I got to take those home, but many users including the operations teams didn't have that flexibility. So, in some cases we saw companies that actually have employees using their own personal devices and connecting to their environments which creates a whole other issue.
JOE
Yeah.
SCOTT
So I think the biggest thing about staying connected that we've learned is that, look, most companies were built around being in a centralized location. Whether it's the applications, the infrastructure, the security, the communications, how data travels through the network, how it's stored and secured all of that was mainly built around, "Hey everybody's in a centralized location we control it here." One of the topics we'll talk about a little bit about today is VDI., the Virtual Desktop Interface. A lot of companies adopted this technology years and years ago and manage it on-prem. And I think that's the biggest difference that as far as keeping people connected and in allowing this elasticity of technology was they leveraged VDI. But as opposed to managing it, on-prem, we're seeing a lot of organizations are now trying to manage it in the cloud, so moving to a windows V-D-I. environment or a VMware cloud environment or Red Hat that allows them a little more elasticity and ability to bring users up and down.
We saw one case in India where over 500 users overnight couldn't get back in the office and they manage their VDI on-prem. And what we're able to do is help them bring that to a windows VDI. environment and literally over a weekend period of time, we're able to 500 users back online and eventually get them devices so that they could perform their jobs. I think that's where most companies are now.
JOE
Yeah and I think us at Insight can voucher that because we ran into the same issue with one of our tier one call centers where we had to get them remote very fast and the same thing. Windows Virtual Desktop came in handy, we're able to spin it up really quick, leverage our Azure resources and get everyone working remotely pretty much within a day or two, so I can understand where you're seeing customers going.
So how do you find that VDI is benefiting operations and customers?
SCOTT
Yeah. So again, I don't know if it's much about the operations, other than if you think operations teams, in the past operations teams typically were always onsite. They're typically key performance indicators that were, "Hey here's how we, I won't say old school but here's how we measure productivity of those types of teams." And I think what we've learned from this is that you can measure productivity and you can be productive in a remote environment. We have the tools, we have the resources, we have the technology now to do it and we've been doing it since March-April timeframe and there's really some great benefits that we've seen. Not only are you saving on real estate costs you're now able to tap into a global talent pool. You've been able to get away from, in some cases Visa issues where you maybe, had to deal with those before. And from a productivity perspective you now are not having hours of travel time. (gadget beeps) So you're having employees get on, have a better work-life experience,
JOE
Right.
SCOTT
And we're getting productivity out of it. So, I think operations, we're seeing some huge benefits there.
JOE
No, I absolutely agree on that sense.
SCOTT
So, Joe, I don't know that I need to tell you this ‘cause this is kind of your world. So how does that when we think about that twist, one of the big factors that comes into play is actually how we manage technology and the life cycle of technology?
If something breaks when you're in the office, I-T. would come in and it would fix it, take it away for an hour and bring it back. We don't have that flexibility anymore, so can we maybe talk about what that life cycle looks like, how deployment and also maybe provisioning, it looks different.
JOE
Yeah. I mean, and you pretty much nailed it on the previous conversation where you said dealing with on-premise networks, trusted networks, people in the office, life was a lot easier. And if you think back in the early nineties and even in the eighties, people started with device life cycle, or shall I say the forward logistics of getting users to device? If you remember Ghost Imaging, Microsoft came out with RES, Remote Installation Services. You had WDS, windows and with the MDT system center and so on and so on. Apple led the way with Apple DEP., now Apple Business Manager with being able to provision over the air. Now you're seeing windows move that direction, Macs are already that direction, Chrome is coming. Chrome has just announced zero touch enrollments and you have it for Android.
So, the technologies have shifted from the eighties to nineties to where we are today, and companies are now seeing they have to move in that direction. Companies who haven't thought about it previously are now forced to move in that direction and there's benefits for it because now instead of being, I'm not sitting in the trusted office, like you're in the office today, lucky you, (chuckles) but I mean, I work from home. So, to get me a device, for Insight to get me a device is difficult. How do I log into the device for the first time? It's just not a practical use for a remote worker and that's where these technologies come in handy. You can provision device exactly as you would in the consumer world where you log in with your email address and your password, everything comes down and you're ready to work preferably within minutes depending on your network connection, understanding some home users may not have the best network connection or consumed by their kids nowadays. But keep in mind, provisioning is not locking you into the brick and mortar building and an office anymore. You can give the user the experience they need, what they're used to in the consumer world, in the corporate world no matter wherever they're located at this point.
SCOTT
Yeah, so that consumerization of that consumer touch that we're used to from our cell phones is now becoming a corporate experience, is pretty much where we're going.
JOE
Absolutely, you nailed it, you absolutely nailed it.
SCOTT
Okay. So, what roadblocks or transitions do we need to see with customers in order to really adopt this type of touchless deployment?
JOE
So the key thing and I know many people may cringe when I say this, is you have to adopt the cloud. So, I mean, you'll see I'm holding in my hand. I have an Android device here. I don't get the provisioning experience or the transition from one device to another, unless I'm in the cloud. So, whether you're Apple, you're using the Apple ecosystem, if you're Android, you're using the Android ecosystem. If you're Microsoft, you're using the Microsoft ecosystem or Microsoft 365, you have to adopt the cloud.
These are the technologies that are going to allow you to shift your settings, your profiles, your files from one machine to another very seamlessly. And then if you look at cloud to blend it's like an Intune or a workspace one from VMware, these are managing the cloud, these are cloud born tools or have shifted from the cloud, from the legacy on premises tools to allow devices to be able to just have an internet connection and now pulling down the applications, pulling down the profiles, pulling down wifi, security, compliance, if you look at encryption on these devices. The cloud is what's allowing you to do this where you're not in the office as you were previously.
SCOTT
Yep. Yeah. Exciting times, and we're living it. What would you say as far as lessons learned, from what we just went through, what are the biggest lessons learned and do we think that they're really going to stick kind of going forward?
JOE
Yeah, so I think the biggest lessons learned, I find talking to many customers is they're stuck in their ways with how they've done things for the past 10, 15 years. So, the biggest lesson learned is step back, look at what the technology that you have available to you, that you probably have already purchased. What are the efficiencies it can give you in supporting the remote worker today? Most people when we talk to them from a customer perspective is, "I'm in system center, I'm doing imaging. I have specific processes and scripts that I have to run." That can easily be done, maybe in a more efficient manner, leveraging these cloud technologies. So, just try not to have the blinders on is the biggest lessons learned and understand that technology has evolved drastically, not only in the past six months, we've seen some big improvements but even over the course of five or 10 years where most people are still leveraging things they've done over those years. So, I mean, outside of that to shift to the cloud is not easy. Take it one step at a time, leverage your partner, Insights is always here to help. We want to be a trusted partner for our customer, but understand the shift to the cloud of getting your data, your email, your devices, get everything set up in the cloud to provide the best user experience you can.
SCOTT
For sure, and I think that as we look at this and kind of summarize, as we kind of close up here, when we think about remote, it's not going away. We know that most customers are going to adopt some type of hybrid environment where they're going to have a portion of their workers that are at home and a portion of that are at work or even a hybrid where they're in the office for a few days a week.
So, number one, we know that there's benefits there from a productivity, from a real estate savings, being able to leverage additional teammates. We also know the technology's out there. It's far enough advanced that the tools and technology are out there to enable this remote type productivity. And then, one of the last things I have is that it sounds like there's probably a journey. Most organizations are going to have a little bit of a journey, they may not have the skillset, the applications may not have been written for a cloud type structure. So, what do customers do to take part of that, in that journey of moving to the cloud?
JOE
Yeah, so the journey is going to be the hardest, it's definitely a difficult part because the journey like you said, you're not just taking processes you do today and just easily saying, "I'm just going to light up the cloud and it's going to be on his merry way." That's just not practical. So, when we talk about a journey, we talk about start small and expand fast. So if you have what we call an MVP, minimum viable product that you can get running, within your environment, so pick a persona, a specific group of people today, everybody's remote so I know it's a bad comparison, but previously we used to say, "Pick your remote workforce." Someone who's never coming into the office, someone who has never probably VPNing in much, they're always in front of customers, they're always just using an internet connection. Those that that's the salesforce, that's the persona that you can easily shift to a cloud first environment. And then once you work through the king's once you work through the complexities, then expand fast. I got this one persona of have done this successful, now how do I build upon it to get my entire Org. in that direction,
SCOTT
Yeah.
JOE
Start small and go fast outside of that.
SCOTT
That's great and I know that here at Insight we have a playbook that we leverage with customers, it's a workplace type of assessment where we go in and we actually assess where a customer is at in this journey, we can provide them a pretty good playbook of, "Hey, here are the steps that we've got to take in order to get you to eventually a touchless environment." It can be very rapid (gadget beeps) and we kind of take customers in their own pace. So, that's awesome, I appreciate it. I appreciate you inviting me to this call and look forward to watching the progress.
JOE
No, thank you, sir, great conversation.
SCOTT
Yeah. Thank you.
JOE
Have a good day.
SCOTT
You too.
Modern Workplace Director and Distinguished Technologist, Insight
With over 25 years of experience in the IT industry, Joe loves that technology constantly changes and provides new challenges, pushing him to learn more every day. As a leader for a vendor-agnostic organization, Joe is equipped to advise clients on the solutions that drive the best value for their business. He is a champion across many technologies and approaches knowledge-sharing not as a one-time project but as a continued mindset.
Vice President, GM Regional Sales, Insight
As the vice president of GM regional sales, Scott has extensive expertise in helping clients solve IT challenges. For more than 12 years at Insight, Scott has focused on helping clients access solutions — from hardware and software to lifecycle services — that drive meaningful business outcomes.
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