20 Reasons Managed VDI Makes Sense

Be it Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, XenApp, XenDesktop, or VMware Horizon, virtual environments can be challenging to maintain at optimal performance. When open Citrix or VMware positions go unfilled by quality candidates, organizations and end-users alike can suffer unnecessarily, and productivity can be impacted by waiting for new employees to fill this specialized role.

Over the last decade, a new option for addressing VDI environment staffing has emerged, removing the traditional risks and unknowns associated with the new hire process, guaranteeing VDI performance. We have identified the top 20 benefits from ten years of managing or co-managing VDI and virtual environments for our clients.

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2. 2. If you have 400 employees or less, having the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops or VMware Horizon VDI environment managed or co-managed will be less expensive than hiring someone.
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4. 3. Everything necessary to have a thriving VDI environment Whitehat provides. Savings on tooling, consulting services, etc., usually leads to net cost reduction for even the largest environments before taking improved end-user productivity into account.
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6. 4. Whitehat offers 100 percent goal alignment. Companies want their employees to be as productive as possible, with no IT issues preventing them from completing their jobs. Our goals are aligned, incentivizing us to avoid problems or resolve them as rapidly as possible, keeping end-users productive.
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8. 5. One person can only work on one support issue or one project at a time. Support efforts and/or project timelines can suffer from a lack of attention. Whitehat has teams of engineers, architects, and other specialists to address all environmental needs simultaneously.
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10. 6. Get more than 3,000 percent more time to manage and support the environment than a single employee can work. The average engineer works 1,850 hours a year after all holidays, vacations, etc., are considered. Whitehat is available 24/7/365 or 8,760 hours a year, never taking a day off, never getting sick, never on vacation needing someone else to cover.
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12. 7. There are 1,500+ VDI environment optimizations and counting that Whitehat has cataloged over the years that we incorporate into every environment we manage or co-manage, making them as efficient and stable as possible. Every client benefits from the discovery of new optimization or performance improvements.
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14. 8. Co-managed or managed VDI eliminates the risk of a bad hire or hiring someone that does not fit the culture. The engineers assigned can always do the job, and alternatives are available if there is a cultural fit problem, all without disrupting operations.
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16. 9.NetScaler/Citrix ADC expertise or F5 expertise are included. It is hard to find a Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops or VMware Horizon resource that can successfully manage VDI and networking appliances, like NetScaler or F5's. Both of these skillsets are available at an expert level to all Whitehat clients.
18. 10. Whitehat offers expertise beyond VDI Workspaces. VDI relies on many different supporting technologies to deliver the best VDI experience. Whitehat includes expertise in all the areas required to support VDI properly, be it networking, Active Directory, SQL, hypervisor, storage, servers, or endpoints.
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20. 11. A login time of 30 seconds or faster is just one of Whitehat's guarantees for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, or VMware Horizon environments managed or co-managed.
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22. 12. Access to Whitehat proof-of-concept environments allows new ideas, applications, and technologies to be tested and validated, reducing risk and confirming clients have all the information necessary to make the best possible purchasing decision.
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24. 13. Environment reporting and support incident analysis provide full transparency to IT and executive leadership into how the Citrix or VMware environments are performing.
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26. 14. Communication is key to having a clear understanding of what is happening in an IT environment. Optimized communication includes ticketing system integration, chat, phone, email, monthly reporting, quarterly reviews, leadership meetings, and regular project cadence meetings to ensure all levels of the organization have clarity on how the VDI environment is performing.
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28. 15. Every client gets an assigned project manager to help keep projects moving forward. The project management team averages a 96.4 percent on-time project completion percentage.
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30. 16. Every client has access to their own Citrix or VMware Horizon architect, along with senior engineers and support staff. Hiring Citrix or VMware Horizon architect-level talent can be difficult to justify from a salary perspective for small to mid-sized environments. However, every client always has this level of expertise available to them.
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32. 17. It is easier to find Unicorns in the aggregate. Unicorns, or people with 10+ years of expertise across various technologies like Azure, Cisco, Microsoft, AWS, etc., can be challenging to find and expensive to hire. It is far easier to access the expertise needed in all these areas in the aggregate, with experts in each area available as required.
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34. 18. Every Citrix and Horizon environment includes free version upgrades. Never pay consultants or have internal staff spend extensive hours doing a Citrix or VMware environment upgrade again. Keeping you on the latest stable version of the platform right for the organization is included.
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36. 19. Get the benefit of knowing what versions of applications are good, stable, and consistent and the ones to avoid. Not every version of Windows Server, Windows 10, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, or VMware Horizon are entirely stable, and it can be tough to know a good version from a lousy one without testing them first. Whitehat does this testing internally for our clients to ensure stability and avoid problems.
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38. 20. Providing clear guidance and expertise for vGPU workloads. vGPU, adding graphics cards to VDI environments, has become a more critical part of Citrix and VMware VDI over the last 18 months as streaming media, webcams, and communications platforms, like Teams, Zoom, GoToMeeting and WebEx, have become more common in VDI environments. Architecture, engineering, and construction firms explore vGPU to deliver graphics-intensive applications like AutoCAD, Revit, Enscape, Bentley, and SolidWorks. Media and entertainment companies and the energy industry also have several specialized applications that are graphics-intensive that take special care and sizing to get right in a VDI environment.

Forty percent of the published application and VDI environments Whitehat encounters are not performing to their full potential.

Every client with a VDI environment should feel confident in their ability to deliver a great end-user experience to anyone, anywhere in the world, with a good internet connection where it makes sense to do business.

Published applications, shared desktops, or VDI delivered with Citrix's Virtual Apps, and Desktops or VMware Horizon should be enabling productivity and allowing employees to work from any device, anywhere. Anything less is unnecessarily robbing productive time from employees, which is counter to the core mission of IT – to keep the environment secure and employees productive.

Whitehat manages or co-manages Citrix and VMware environments coast-to-coast in North America and for subsidiaries worldwide centered on performance and delivering a great end-user experience. If you have a dedicated or shared Citrix or VMware Horizon role open, you should explore this model. There is not a faster, more consistent way of finding needed expertise.

We all want VDI environments to enable employees to be productive, deliver a good, consistent end-user experience, and optimized to squeeze every drop of performance out of the VDI investment that does not cost too much to maintain. This program solves these challenges and removes the risk of having anything less than a high-performing VDI environment. Photo 41259535 © Cammeraydave | Dreamstime.com