Desktop as a service: successful deployment strategies

Welcome back to my two-part guide to choosing the correct DaaS provider for your enterprise.

In part one I stressed the need to understand what you want to achieve from your DaaS deployment before you begin defining the project.

In part two of this report I’ll explain the next steps I usually take when I’m helping clients build successful DaaS deployments.

·        Step 2: Understanding application profiles

·        Step 3: Choose wisely

·        Step 4: Test, rollout and manage

Step 2: Understanding application profiles

It is important to verify application compatibility. Are the applications you use in your enterprise compatible with existing DaaS systems, or will remedial work be required?

You and your DaaS service provider must assess each application you hope to make available, reaching an accurate estimate of application load and service demand. It’s possible some essential apps only see seasonal demand, while other seemingly less important applications may be used every day. This frequency and intensity of use will impose different infrastructure demands when you migrate, and these differences could have bearing on overall project running costs.

You should also consider the collaboration requirements within your applications: Do you use video or voice within your collaborative apps, and what impact might this have on bandwidth application load?

All this information is essential to DaaS providers as it helps them build and prepare a solution equipped with the right balance of anticipated resource usage for CPU, RAM, storage BW and all the other components on which even an outsourced DaaS system relies. This is assisted of course by the accurate user and role count you created in step one, enabling you to make decisions on questions such as vCPU units per user, and how much bandwidth you’re going to need to make available.

This deep analysis of likely resource usage is essential to defining future infrastructure requirements for you and your DaaS provider.

Step 3: Choose wisely

A poorly-chosen DaaS solution (deployed on public, private, or hybrid cloud or internal systems) will be all too apparent to end users, management and IT!

Where users are based may inform infrastructure decisions. Will you host locally, internationally, privately in-premises or use hosted private server infrastructure? How will you address points of potential highest demand?

Will you deploy your services through a single server farm, or multiple farms? You must also ensure your systems are compliant with local, national and international data regulation.

While a good DaaS solutions provider will assist you with this you can get a picture of how your solution should work by exploring published information from technology providers including Citrix, Cisco and NetApp, all of which have published validated architecture designs, for example this 2,000-seat VDI from Cisco.

When shopping around for potential service providers make sure they use such validated architecture. Orange has wide experience of DaaS deployments in different industries at different sizes from 2,000-80,000 users, to which we provide design and support structures to match what’s required, including hosted private cloud and support provision for your DaaS infrastructure.

Should you choose to make DaaS available from a single site then do pay attention to redundancy, high availability, Business Continuity Planning and service level agreements (SLA’s) when designing your solution.

Using proven architectures from the get-go reduces the risk of project failure and improves the chance for successful deployment – employees need systems that do what they need to do, or they won’t use them. Choosing (and tweaking) architecture so it is appropriate to need is essential, which is why you must rigorously assess those needs right from the start.

Step 4: Test, rollout and manage

Before introducing your DaaS solution test it rigorously using an isolated testing environment in which you should check and verify software, configuration and hardware before you go fully live. This test environment needs to mirror the final production environment as closely as possible. Orange Business tests our client’s DaaS deployments at our lab in Clearwater, Florida.

Transparent management tools are essential. Once your DaaS is deployed you cannot understate the importance of an effective dashboard system that allows you to monitor performance, compliance and security from one place. This matters as your business grows, when new users, applications and other solutions can be introduced to match business need in the most agile way possible.

I hope you’ve picked up some useful tips to help you take charge of future DaaS deployments at your enterprise and can now engage in useful conversations with service providers as you move to deploy successful solutions.

Take a look at how Orange Business can help you build your ideal digital working environment leveraging Orange Private Cloud solutions to ensure the success of your desktop virtualization project.