Find the best time to launch desktop products in cloud computing

Before moving any data center to cloud computing or Virtual desktop infrastructure, it is important to analyze and determine the rationale and pros and cons of using these new technologies first. One of the most important steps is to fully understand the scope of application and the pros and cons of both technologies.

If a company with a private cloud has only a subset of end-users who have access to a handful of applications residing in the cloud, it is possible that it does not have to accept full desktop services for those users. Using published application technologies, such as the XenApp of Citrix, will help save time and money because it only uses the space and storage resources that a particular application requires at runtime.

Similar to the virtual desktop infrastructure, but not part of the desktop, published applications allow end users to remotely connect applications that are assigned, such as any location outside the corporate network. When properly configured, end users experience a seamless environment in which the application looks as if it were installed and running on the user's local computer. Users can log on to a single platform and access all the resources they need.

If you install a virtual desktop environment in a correct environment and are incorporated into a private cloud or public cloud, it will have a positive effect. That is where the real value lies.

End User Experience

Vista has not yet achieved this goal as planned, and Windows XP has become increasingly dead, forcing many organizations to turn their sights to Windows 7. However, as with every software problem encountered in the migration, its price is unusually expensive because it requires new hardware, new training, compatibility tests with legacy applications running in any environment during migration, and so on. These factors can quickly erode your budget.

This suggests that it is now the perfect time to migrate traditional desktop infrastructure from hosting a private cloud in your data center.

For example, Citrix's XenDesktop allows end users to log on to an office PC and work on Microsoft Word processing documents. The same user can then move to another office, start the same session, and continue working based on the same document. When working remotely on the ipad, users can connect to a private cloud to achieve session recovery based on Windows 7 virtual desktops. When a connection is established, users can resume their work in the same word processing document.

Data integrity. IT administrators are more concerned with issues such as security and data integrity. Because of the complexity of the environment you use, strict management and careful protection are required, and administrators have to worry about the following regulations and compliance standards. By hosting and protecting your application in a private cloud is a way to protect your data; You can use the same approach to protect your desktop services.

After using the virtual Desktop infrastructure, you can protect sensitive desktop data on the server instead of using an unprotected PC. Therefore, running a virtual Desktop infrastructure model based on centralized cloud computing will help meet the requirements of government enforcement standards, such as Oxley or HIPAA. Note that in this case we no longer save the data in the end-user's device. In contrast, all necessary information is centrally located and transmitted over the network for use. This helps prevent security vulnerabilities and prevent data loss due to hardware loss or theft, with the help of any government compliance audit that may occur.

You can also host virtual desktops in a public cloud or hosted by a vendor. Accessing a full desktop in a public cloud will not be a regulatory nightmare. Users can log on to the Web portal or use the interface of Active Directory to achieve access to their own portions of the enterprise cloud. After that, users can start the application, reconnect to other sessions, or use virtual desktops.

Organizational change. Companies have all along been encountering different mergers and acquisitions. If your company is planning to make organizational changes, then cloud based Virtual Desktop infrastructure deployment will become inevitable.

After mergers, new business units often need to use new technologies that are not in the datacenter and cannot be delivered immediately. If your virtual desktop infrastructure is hosted by a public cloud provider, it teams will be able to deliver virtual desktops and business-critical applications to new communities within minutes.

For example, suppose the newly acquired company is located thousands of kilometres away from the new parent company. IT managers must provide access to different applications for 50 primary principals in the new subsidiaries. By using the cloud based Virtual Desktop infrastructure, the team can provide 50 newly merged or assigned desktop services and deliver them to the new department. By providing a network portal for a login for a new company, they can access applications, desktops, and shared files that reside on the primary datacenter Server without immediately migrating data to the data center of the new acquisition company.

Single sign-on. Mobility and access to applications are a major concern for many organizations. Some companies insist on a "take your own computer" strategy, which allows employees to use their own laptops for work purposes.

The new technology uses identity Union for single sign-on access to cloud computing applications. Software such as Layer 7 and Pingfederate, a service (SaaS) provider, allows enterprises to set up mirrors in the cloud for Active Directory for seamless access.

Other open Cloud access products, such as Citrix, put SaaS applications entirely under one architecture. An administrator can assign a cloud based application to a user's set of desktop applications. When a user sees Salesforce.com on his desktop, he can access the portal by simply clicking on the icon. By reducing credential complexity, the infrastructure provides a more secure and efficient way for end-users to bring cloud-based SaaS applications to end users.

For different businesses, there is always a way to fit their specific needs. Because each environment is unique, it is important to develop a business use case for the technology you choose. In order to achieve maximum ROI, appropriate planning is needed to determine whether the virtual desktop infrastructure in the cloud or in the application environment is more appropriate.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)