Empower end-users with better EUC solutions

Business landscapes have changed with the dawn of new technologies, and as a result, the end-user computing experience has changed as well. More is required today to allow employees in a variety of locations to access applications their work revolves around.

Outstanding user experience. End-users need to get work done and the best way to do that is to provide the most optimal end-user experience with any device.

Pervasive workforce mobility. Employees want to work from anywhere, anytime and from any device, even multiple devices.

Cloud services and data. You’re moving everything to the cloud, from your corporate data to your applications and other enterprise services.

Operational cost reductions. Your IT spend is being dramatically curtailed, forcing you to make more with existing investments and to upgrade only when significant OpEx and CapEx reductions are guaranteed.

Who cares about EUC?

EUC initiatives can have a long-lasting and positive effect on all stakeholder groups in your organisation.

End-users. End-users are able to accelerate their productivity on virtualised desktops without the hassle and limitations of physical hardware and location.

IT personnel. IT is able to automate many of the manual processes that bog them down when supporting physical desktop hardware and software.

Executive management. Executive management can better maintain operational costs while also keeping CapEx spend in check.

Technology vendors. Technology vendors who provide end-to-end EUC solutions spend less time troubleshooting and error-proofing their offers and more time innovating and expanding on the capabilities of the solution itself.

Why planning ahead is important to success

How do you keep your focus on the end-user to ensure the best possible computing experience? First of all, you need to make sure you gather comprehensive user requirements.

Analyse the tasks they’re doing, how they’re doing them, the overall workflow, and the applications involved. You should also storyboard proposed solutions and run them past the end-users, in order to solicit their impressions prior to any pilot programs and usability tests.

It’s best to know that you’re veering off course early on, before you make further investments into possible solutions. Then, as you begin to ramp up end-user testing — and user testing is probably the most important part of it all — make sure that you structure the way that users carry out their tests and the way that you record the results. Interpreting end-user feedback can introduce things like confirmation bias issues, so be on the lookout for ways in which you might be interpreting feedback to confirm.

The goal of end-user computing is to provide the absolute best experience for users. However, if the virtual desktop experience is not as good as the one provided by their previous physical hardware, users will soon be wishing they could roll back to that earlier environment. Users need to find their experience is just as fast (or faster), extremely stable, and easy in order for your EUC initiative to succeed. If they don’t experience this, your EUC initiative will fail.

Why do end-user computing initiatives frequently fail?

Not understanding the work process in the beginning of an EUC project will prohibit technology from improving it. Gather as much knowledge as possible, and don’t make assumptions about the business that could prove to be detrimental to the technology implementation. Prepare and reduce the risk factors that will lead your business to the best user experience.

Every organisation that makes the commitment to an end-user computing initiative does so with the best of intentions for end-users. Freeing end-users from cumbersome physical desktop environments and unleashing the power and flexibility of virtual desktops drive the majority of EUC initiatives from an incentive perspective.

But for most organisations, it’s about more than just empowering the end-user. IT and executive management are also enticed by the potential cost savings and long-term reduction in Total Cost of Ownership promised by EUC and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure vendors.

Being able to streamline the infrastructure, centralise virtual desktop management, and create shorter upgrade cycles for critical fixes and new features certainly makes sense from an OpEx perspective.

So why do so many of these EUC initiatives fail in the end?

Why is it that after thoughtful technical planning, significant investment, and careful selection of vendor(s), nearly half of these initiatives hit a performance wall so soon after cutover to production, with users clamouring for their old desktop environments? Who really deserves the scrutiny and blame when things don’t turn out as expected?

The problem resides in the siloed nature of the data centre infrastructure itself. This is the reason that Nutanix delivers a unified end-user computing solution. We see the dangers in approaching EUC from a purely product perspective, which encourages viewing the components of EUC as separate silos of functionality.

Critical factors for successful EUC

Upgrade end-users. For example, laptop hardware is going out of support, so you’re replacing this hardware with virtual desktops. Or you’re going to refresh the end-user operating systems. Your IT and applications teams might even be delivering individual apps as SaaS.

Secure access. For example, you might have to provision secure desktops and apps for training, onboarding, testing/development while remaining compliant.

Support any device. For example, support bring-your-own-device (BYOD) or choose-your-own-device (CYOD) initiatives on myriad types of devices.

Nutanix — a foundation you can trust

As a leading provider of EUC, hyperconverged infrastructure, and cloud solutions, Nutanix is uniquely positioned to help you navigate the changing end-user computing landscape. We offer both Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) solutions to address your unique requirements, whether you need on-premises services or services delivered from the cloud.

Nutanix offers cloud-based DaaS, connecting end-users to applications, desktops, and data in multi-cloud environments. Nutanix DaaS complements or takes the place of VDI environments, eliminates the need for infrastructure deployment and management, accelerates delivery of desktops and apps to users, and reduces CapEx.

Desktop as a service, your choice

Get the best on-premises VDI and Desktop-as-a-Service solutions with Nutanix. Connect users, apps and data securely on multi-cloud, on-premises, and hybrid cloud. Simplicity — no certified professional required. Faster time to value — onboarding of users in hours.

Any app. Deliver apps to desktops easily and quickly.

Any storage/IAM. Integrated with industry leading cloud services.

Any infrastructure. Deploy desktops on choice of your data centre or on public cloud: Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure.

Experience the benefits of Nutanix EUC solutions

Excellent user experience at scale. Scale from pilot to thousands of end-users without re-architecting your infrastructure. Benefit from the industry’s leading HCI solution and world-class support used to deliver millions of virtual desktops and apps. Eliminate risk of failure with Nutanix Services including VDI Assurance.

Always-on availability and security. Reduce downtime by as much as 97% with built-in self-healing and intelligent automation capabilities. Deliver uninterrupted access to digital workspaces with bursting and failover across multiple clouds. Prevent unwanted attacks and keep end-user data secured with encrypted desktops and user files. Stop malware from spreading with secured network access between the network firewall and the user desktop.

Faster time to delivery. Deploy your virtual apps and desktops 8x faster with one-click deployment and management. Enable global collaboration with an enterprise-ready digital workspace within minutes, not hours or days. Support any end-users, including mobile and remote users, on the broadest set of platforms (on-premises, hosted, and public cloud).

Operational efficiencies and reduced costs. Reduce IT costs by up to 60%, with an investment payback of 7 months. Slash CapEx by as much as 40%. Align licensing to users for optimal value. Gain operational efficiencies by consolidating services like home directories, user profiles, departmental shares, network segmentation, and more.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/AntonioDiaz