Article 4 Additional Services To Boost Your Business On Top Of WVD
By Insight UK / 18 Aug 2020 / Topics: Virtualization Microsoft Azure
By Insight UK / 18 Aug 2020 / Topics: Virtualization Microsoft Azure
For years, desktop virtualization on Windows Server offered Service Providers the advantage of deploying and managing desktops from a single location in private data centers. However, there were still limitations. Sometimes third-party vendors were required to run certain applications with Windows Server, which meant more software, more complexity, more licenses and more costs. In addition, each VM user required a separate RDS license, which could quickly lead to high costs. For large Service Providers, for example, these costs could amount to tens to hundreds of thousands of euros per month for the license alone.
When Microsoft's Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) arrived in September 2019, it heralded a turnaround in desktop virtualization. Microsoft's comprehensive desktop and app virtualization service on Azure offers two major benefits: the ability to provide remote desktops without the need to manage all the backend infrastructure plus a true multi-user client OS with Windows 10 Enterprise Multi-User.
Among many other benefits – just follow our blogs or webinars to find out more – WVD offers huge time and cost savings on infrastructure maintenance, expensive RDS licenses or critical third-party applications. This is interesting for all Service Providers and particularly for ISVs, whose added value lies predominantly in the Intellectual Property (IP) they create and market and not in the infrastructure itself.
Looking at these benefits alone, WVD is in itself a great opportunity to improve your business. But you can do even better by expanding WVD with additional – sometimes free – services available in Azure and the Azure Marketplace.
Hardware budgeting is one of the toughest issues when discussing Windows Virtual Desktop and the cloud. Most hardware is depreciated over five years, so what do you do? You don’t want to drain thousands or even millions by removing or replacing your (old) existing endpoints. This dilemma is now solved with IGEL OS. This light-weight, Linux-based edge OS has been validated and certified with Microsoft and converts any PC, laptop, tablet, thin client, and most other x86-64 devices for WVD device access. New and fancy is the IGEL UD Pocket (UDP), an extremely small ‘thin client’ USB, which supports the latest Windows Virtual Desktop Spring 2020 update.
Azure Lighthouse is another great way to expand your own WVD offering. Lighthouse is a free service on Azure, allowing you to manage the Azure resources of all your end customers from a single control plane in your own Azure Portal. It also protects you against IP loss, as your IP is no longer deployed to the customer tenant, but remains within your company. Since all customer WVD resources are visible in your portal, you are able to create a deployment and management service for your customers, for example to optimize usage costs or improve security, and expand your portfolio by making this available in Azure Marketplace as a managed service for potential customers.
Microsoft Azure Sentinel allows you to take your managed service offering one step further. Sentinel is Microsoft’s Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) service in Azure, very powerful, deployed in hours and paid by usage without high upfront costs for infrastructure maintenance and data ingestion. Once you have onboarded your customers on WVD and created a deployment and management service with Azure Lighthouse, you can connect Azure Sentinel to provide managed cloud security, for example Security Operations Centre (SOC) services. With the advantage of a single portal to manage everything. An interesting option if you already have a security specialist in your company or if you are considering a similar service but are held back by the implementation costs.
Windows Virtual Desktop is a major breakthrough for Microsoft adepts, but also for partners rooted in VMware and Citrix. Both Citrix and VMware are certified Microsoft partners for Windows Virtual Desktop. Both vendors offer WVD support so partners can deploy desktops in the cloud and combine their acquired skills with the convenience of WVD. They can now create a virtual desktop with WVD instead of building the entire set-up in their own data centre. The benefits are obvious: responding to customer demand, reaping the benefits of the cloud benefits such as elasticity, agility and switching from CapEx to OpEx, eliminating backend management and freeing up staff for higher-value work.
Check out our free webinars to boost your business with Windows Virtual Desktop and additional services.
