UNC Health Care selects IGEL Universal Desktop Converter (UDC) and IGEL Universal Management Suite (UMS) for simplicity, cost-savings and security.
“The need to provide users with access to their desktops from any device anywhere, anytime is driving a growing number of IT organizations to migrate toward VDI environments,” said Simon Clephan, Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Alliances, IGEL. “One of the key advantages that IGEL brings to the table is the simplicity that comes from being able to manage an entire fleet of thin clients from a single console. Additionally, the IGEL Universal Desktop Converter provides IT organizations with the flexibility they need to convert any compatible thin client, desktop or laptop computer into an IGEL thin client solution, without having to make an upfront investment in new hardware to support their virtualized infrastructures.”
UNC Health Care selected the IGEL UDC and UMS software for its Citrix VDI deployment following a “bake-off” between thin client solutions. “IGEL won hands down due the simplicity and superiority of its management capabilities,” said James Cole, Technical Architect, UNC Health Care. “And, because the IGEL UDC software is designed to quickly and efficiently convert existing endpoint hardware into IGEL Linux OS-powered thin clients, we knew that by selecting the IGEL solution we would also realize a significant reduction in our capital expenditures.”
Since initiating the deployment of the IGEL UDC and UMS software, UNC Health Care has also experienced significant time savings. “Prior to deploying the IGEL UDC and UMS software, it took our team 25-30 minutes to create a virtual image on each system, not counting the personalization of the system for each use case, now that process takes less than 10 minutes, and even less time when converting the system to VDI roaming,” added Cole.
Additionally, the ease of integration between the IGEL UDC and IGEL UMS with Citrix XenDesktop and other solutions offered by Citrix Ecosystem partners, including Imprivata, has enabled secure access to the health care network’s Epic Systems’ Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system.
Fulton Financial Corporation has a long and storied history that began in 1882 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where local merchants and farmers organized Fulton National Bank. The bank’s name was chosen to honor Lancaster County native Robert Fulton, the inventor and artist best known for designing and building the Clermont, the first successful steamboat.
In an effort to optimize the productivity of its employees and enable them to have more time to focus on their customers, Fulton sought to upgrade the thin clients for its Citrix application virtualization infrastructure, with the help of its Citrix partner and IGEL Platinum Partner, Plan B Technologies.
In selecting a desktop computing solution to support its Citrix application virtualization infrastructure, Fulton had one unique business requirement, they were looking for a solution that would mirror the experience provided by a Windows PC, without actually being a Windows PC.
During the evaluation process, Fulton looked at thin clients from IGEL and another leading manufacturer, conducting a “bake-off” of several models including the IGEL Universal Desktop (UD6). Fulton like the fact that IGEL is forward- thinking in designing its desktop computing solutions, and began its IGEL roll-out by purchasing 2,300 IGEL UD6 thin clients in 2016 for its headquarters and branch offices, and plans to complete the roll out of IGEL thin clients to the remainder of its 3,700 employees in the coming months. The bank is also leveraging the IGEL Universal Management Suite (UMS) to manage its fleet of IGEL thin clients.
Many organizations have turned to virtualizing user endpoints to help reduce capital and operational expenses while increasing security. This is especially true within healthcare, where hospitals, clinics, and urgent care centers seek to offer the best possible patient outcomes while adhering to a variety of mandated patient security and information privacy requirements.
With the movement of desktops and applications into the secure data center or cloud, the need for reliable printing of documents, some very sensitive in nature, remains a constant that can be challenging when desktops are virtual but the printing process remains physical. Directing print jobs to the correct printer with the correct physical access rights in the correct location while ensuring compliance with key healthcare mandates like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is critical.
Healthcare IT needs to keep pace with these requirements and the ongoing printing demands of healthcare. Medical professionals need to print effortlessly and reliably to nearby or appropriate printers within virtual environments, and PrinterLogic and IGEL can help make that an easy, reliable process—all while efficiently maintaining the protection of confidential patient information. By combining PrinterLogic’s enterprise print management software with centrally managed direct IP printing and IGEL’s software-defined thin client endpoint management, healthcare organizations can:
With the onset of more modular and cloud-centric architectures, many organizations with disparate monitoring tools are reassessing their monitoring landscape. According to Gartner, hybrid IT (especially with IaaS subscription) enterprises must adopt more holistic IT infrastructure monitoring tools (ITIM) to gain visibility into their IT landscapes.
The guide provides insight into the IT infrastructure monitoring tool market and providers as well as key findings and recommendations.
Get the 2018 Gartner Market Guide for IT Infrastructure Monitoring Tools to see:
Key Findings Include:
The primary goal of a multi-cloud data management strategy is to supply data, either via copying or moving data to the various multi-cloud use cases. A key enabler of this movement is the data management software applications. In theory, data protection applications can perform both of the copy and move functions. A key consideration is how the multi-cloud data management experience is unified. In most cases, data protection applications ignore the user experience of each cloud and use their proprietary interface as the unifying entity, which increases complexity.
There are a variety of reasons organizations may want to leverage multiple clouds. The first use case is to use public cloud storage as a backup mirror to an on-premises data protection process. Using public cloud storage as a backup mirror enables the organization to automatically off-site data. It also sets up many of the more advanced use cases.
Another use case is using the cloud for disaster recovery.
Another use case is “Lift and Shift,” which means the organization wants to run the application in the cloud natively. Initial steps in the “lift and shift” use case are similar to Dev/Test, but now the workload is storing unique data in the cloud.
Multi-cloud is a reality now for most organizations and managing the movement of data between these clouds is critical.
Managing the performance of Windows-based workloads can be a challenge. Whether physical PCs or virtual desktops, the effort required to maintain, tune and optimize workspaces is endless. Operating system and application revisions, user installed applications, security and bug patches, BIOS and driver updates, spyware, multi-user operating systems supply a continual flow of change that can disrupt expected performance. When you add in the complexities introduced by virtual desktops and cloud architectures, you have added another infinite source of performance instability. Keeping up with this churn, as well as meeting users’ zero tolerance for failures, are chief worries for administrators.
To help address the need for uniform performance and optimization in light of constant change, Liquidware introduced the Process Optimization feature in its Stratusphere UX solution. This feature can be set to automatically optimize CPU and Memory, even as system demands fluctuate. Process Optimization can keep “bad actor” applications or runaway processes from crippling the performance of users’ workspaces by prioritizing resources for those being actively used over not used or background processes. The Process Optimization feature requires no additional infrastructure. It is a simple, zero-impact feature that is included with Stratusphere UX. It can be turned on for single machines, or groups, or globally. Launched with the check of a box, you can select from pre-built profiles that operate automatically. Or administrators can manually specify the processes they need to raise, lower or terminate, if that task becomes required. This feature is a major benefit in hybrid multi-platform environments that include physical, pool or image-based virtual and cloud workspaces, which are much more complex than single-delivery systems. The Process Optimization feature was designed with security and reliability in mind. By default, this feature employs a “do no harm” provision affecting normal and lower process priorities, and a relaxed policy. No processes are forced by default when access is denied by the system, ensuring that the system remains stable and in line with requirements.
The driving force for organizations today is digital transformation, propelled by a need for greater innovation and agility across enterprises. The digital life-blood for this transformation remains computers, although their form-factor has changed dramatically over the past decade. Smart devices, including phones, tablets and wearables, have joined PCs and laptops in the daily toolsets used by workers to do their jobs. The data that organizations rely on increasingly comes from direct sources via smart cards, monitors, implants and embedded processors. IoT, machine learning and artificial intelligence will shape the software that workers use to do their jobs. As these “smart” applications change and take on scope, they will increasingly be deployed on cloud infrastructures, bringing computing to the edge and enabling swift and efficient processing with real-time data.
Yet digital transformation for many organizations can remain blocked if they do not start changing how their workspaces are provisioned. Many still rely on outmoded approaches for delivering the technology needed by their workers to make them productive in a highly digital workplace.In this paper, Liquidware presents a roadmap for providing modern workspaces for organizations that are undergoing digital transformation. We offer insights into how our Adaptive Workspace Management (AWM) suite of products can support the build-out of an agile, state-of-the-artworkspace infrastructure that quickly delivers the resources workers need, on demand. AWM allows this infrastructure to be constructed from a hybrid mix of the best-of-breed workspace delivery platforms spanning physical, virtual and cloud offerings.
Managing Windows user profiles can be a complex and challenging process. Better profile management is usually sought by organizations looking to reduce Windows login times, accommodate applications that do not adhere to best practice application data storage, and to give users the flexibility to login to any Windows Operating System (OS) and have their profile follow them.
Note that additional profile challenges and solutions are covered in a related ProfileUnity whitepaper entitled “User Profile and Environment Management with ProfileUnity.” To efficiently manage the complex challenges of today’s diverse Windows profile environments, Liquidware ProfileUnity exclusively features two user profile technologies that can be used together or separately depending on the use case. These include:
1. ProfileDisk™, a virtual disk based profile that delivers the entire profile as a layer from an attached user VHD or VMDK, and
2. Profile Portability, a file and registry based profile solution that restores files at login, post login, or based on environment triggers.
Kaleida Health was looking to modernize the digital experience for its clinicians and back office support staff. Aging and inconsistent desktop hardware and evolving Windows OS support requirements were taxing the organization’s internal IT resources. Further, the desire to standardize on Citrix VDI for both on-site and remote workers meant the healthcare organization needed to identify a new software and hardware solution that would support simple and secure access to cloud workspaces.
The healthcare organization began the process by evaluating all of the major thin client OS vendors, and determined IGEL to be the leader for multiple reasons – it is hardware agnostic, stable and has a small footprint based on Linux OS, and it offers a great management platform, the IGEL UMS, for both on-site users and remote access.
Kaleida Health also selected LG thin client monitors early on because the All-in-One form factor supports both back office teams and more importantly, clinical areas including WoW carts, letting medical professionals securely log in and access information and resources from one, protected data center.
In this guide you will learn about Disaster Recovery planning with Zerto and its impact on business continuity.
In today’s always-on, information-driven business environment, business continuity depends completely on IT infrastructures that are up and running 24/7. Being prepared for any data related disaster – whether natural or man-made – is key to avoiding costly downtime and data loss.
Zerto’s DR solutions are applicable for both on-premise and cloud (DRaaS) virtual environments
Having a plan and process in place will help you mitigate the impact of an outage on your business
Download this guide to gain insights into the challenges, needs, strategies, and solutions for disaster recovery and business continuity, especially in modern, virtualized environments and the public cloud.
Since the 2015 merger, various teams within the now combined Springer Nature IT department—such as the network, SysAdmin, and infrastructure teams—from different countries and with different backgrounds, methodologies, and vendors—had to collaborate and consolidate.
Springer Nature was already using SolarWinds® solutions upon Senior Systems Monitoring Analyst Dave Morris’s arrival at the company. He recalls, “It was a smaller SolarWinds environment then, and we’ve since grown it. After the merger, many other legacy products were very niche, and we couldn’t justify the cost of maintaining them as they were no longer suitable for the needs of the company and team. We decided to focus on SolarWinds, and because we utilize so many SolarWinds modules and we keep growing it as we go, the environment—and the benefit we receive from SolarWinds—continues to build.”
Though the Springer Nature IT infrastructure is now immense, it’s managed by a team of two: Morris and Software Engineer Consultant Liam Miller. Together, they comprise the global systems monitoring team for the entire Springer Nature business. As proponents for SolarWinds and in introducing SolarWinds products to the internal IT teams, it has been a process of building a team’s confidence in what the solutions could deliver as they get used to newer ways of working and scalability.
Mobile app security shouldn’t be left until the end of the development process. It is possible to integrate security measure throughout the entirety of the development process — even if your team is using one of the agile development methods. If an organization pushes security later in the development process, or even waits until the development process is complete, they run the risk of major complications and the consequences from security incidents. These include:
This whitepaper will show your organization how to seamlessly integrate security throughout your mobile app’s development lifecycle, without slowing your app development teams down. Guardsquare covers each step of the secure software development lifecycle (SSDLC) and shows you how security tests can be built into each of the seven phases: inception, requirements analysis, architecture and design, development, testing, deployment, and steady state.
Ready to take your security strategy to the next level? Download the full report to get started!
How Backup Breaks Hyperconvergence
Backup creates several separate architectures outside of the HCI architecture. Each of these architectures need independent management. First, the backup process will often require a dedicated backup server. That server will run on a stand-alone system and then connect to the HCI solution to perform a backup. Second, the dedicated backup server will almost always have its own storage system to store data backed up from the HCI. Third, there are some features, like instant recovery and off-site replication, that require production quality storage to function effectively.The answer for IT is to find a backup solution that fully integrates with the HCI solution, eliminating the need to create these additional silos.