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Virtual Workplace

The concept of the virtual workplace — or virtualization — can mean different things to different people. At its core, we at Derive like to think of it as enabling excellent and flexible productivity from an organization’s workforce regardless of their physical location.

Solutions - Virtual Workplace

The COVID-19 pandemic has served as a wake-up call for every organization to have robust support for virtual workplace operations in place so: 1) their workforce can easily collaborate and remain productive no matter where they are, and 2) full and efficient use is made of any endpoint hardware they procure.

Picking the right mix of virtualization solutions is critical to ensuring the success of your overall IT technology strategy. Derive Technologies maintains strategic partnerships with leading virtualization partners, including Microsoft, HPE, VMWare, Nutanix, and Citrix, among others. Our professional services team has the experience and expertise to develop and implement an appropriate virtualization strategy for your organization.

See the Virtual Components info tab to learn more about the different virtualization software elements necessary for a cohesive virtual workplace environment. And to ask for a complimentary consultation with one of Derive’s practice architects, just BOOK A FREE CONSULTATION

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Derive Technologies leverages the vast collective experience of its team professionals by means of a set of standardized and well-documented IT problem-solving approaches we call SolutionPathsSM. Continuously honed over the last twenty years to incorporate a steady evolution of practices and technologies over time, they reflect the company’s insights into business consulting workflows, process and client support best practices, and more.

SolutionPathsSM enables Derive technologists to support repeatable, high-quality engagements of any size and create tailored solutions for clients while profiting from past experiences.

Across such practice areas such as data centers, cloud computing, remote office operations, networking, security, and others, Derive applies SolutionPathsSM to such tasks as:

  • Strategic project planning and blueprinting—customized for your organization and its specific needs
  • Business structure assessments—to help create or amplify IT best practices
  • Process and workflow standardization
  • Facility walkthroughs and technology inventories
  • IT risk management
  • Current- and future-state technology assessments—including the best possible leveraging of existing infrastructure and systems, along with migration and upgrade pathways to newer, modernized computing paradigms (e.g., from on-premises to a hybrid cloud strategy)
  • Financial and operational modeling—including IT capital planning to help your organization realize its desired technology and business goals
  • Security assessments
  • Compliance reviews
  • Benchmarking, testing and diagnostics
  • IT sourcing, procurement and support contract solutions

To learn more about how Derive Technologies can address your needs, BOOK A FREE CONSULTATION

Behind the scenes at any organization fielding a virtual workplace are several vital software components woven into an overall virtualization architecture.

  • Server Virtualization – The capability to run multiple virtual instances of operating systems on a single piece of hardware is the most common consideration when IT people think of virtualization. Several vendors provide this ability: Microsoft, VMWare, Citrix, and Nutanix. And while the general functions are the same across all these providers, the platform chosen will provide different feature sets and capabilities.
  • Desktop Virtualization – Providing virtual desktops for end-users to perform their day-to-day activities—that leverage hypervisors in the data center—is an essential component of supporting an organization’s virtual workplace capabilities. Technologies like Citrix Virtual Desktops, VMWare Horizon, or Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop apply a many-to-one approach with “single image management” enabling allowing IT administrators to configure a single “gold” computing environment, or image, and deploy it to hundreds or thousands of users with minimal management overhead. Virtual desktop solutions provide users with a fully functional desktop environment complete with applications, login scripts, and file storage shares to enable performance of their daily work tasks, generally with network protocols that allow employees to have a user experience similar if not identical to sitting at a familiar standalone desktop or laptop machine.
  • Application Virtualization – This class of software technology enables organizations to prepare applications for deployment to their user base without having to natively install them on each individual desktop, laptop, or other computing endpoint device. Products like Citrix Virtual Apps (formerly XenApp) and Microsoft RemoteApp prepare applications to run on separate virtual machines in a datacenter, allowing users to run on various separate machines. Other technologies like Microsoft App-V or VMWare ThinApp allow applications to be prepackaged and copied to individual machines.

  • Network Security and Stability – Leveraging Application Delivery Controllers, such as those from Citrix and Kemp, allow organizations to secure and deliver web-based applications to their end users with greatly enhanced security. Additionally, platforms such as VMWare NSX enhance the security of deployed virtual networks.

  • Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity – Virtualization takes on a key role in an organization’s planning for what to do when the worst happens. Choosing the right strategy and the right products help ensure that when action must be taken, failover and failback is as seamless as possible.

  • Hybrid Environments – Public cloud providers increasingly co-exist with modern datacenters, whether it takes the form of extending on-premises offerings, minimizing hardware procurement, or playing a larger, more active role in the disaster recovery process. When done correctly, linking cloud providers to datacenters can provide your organization with unparalleled flexibility.

To learn more about how Derive Technologies can address your needs, BOOK A FREE CONSULTATION

Virtualization offerings can be used to address common business and technical challenges.

Scenario 1: Be prepared to handle the unexpected

Beyond just providing resources to implement the servers necessary to run your infrastructure, making sure your organization is making the best use of its IT investment will help ensure readiness for the unexpected.

Derive has helped customers navigate the complexities of moving from a single physical data center to that a fully resilient “always on” strategy that takes full advantage of features already available in current platform technology. Sometimes all that is required is demystifying process and getting to the mission-critical goals of your organization—like keeping computing resources available regardless of adverse conditions like extended power or site outages. In the event of a site outage, having the right resources—like VMWare Site Recovery Manager to bring your disaster recovery site online and populated—is a key enablement tool. Additionally, capabilities like Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) from a capable ADC provides resiliency for web-based applications.

Scenario 2: Remote doesn’t have to mean less productive

During the last year, many organizations made a rapid shift to employees working remotely outside their normal office environments, and with that shift came the realization that users’ personal devices are not generally up to the requirements of a traditional office PC. Even if quickly deploying VPN connections to all users is possible—which carries its own security considerations—issues such as the proper application sets for users to work effectively must be addressed.

Implementing a robust virtual desktop solution like that offered by Citrix Virtual Desktops allows for rapid deployment of secured desktops to accommodate a large and diverse user base—including all required applications, data access, and other resources—regardless of an individual users location in a traditional office or home/remote office setting.

Scenario 3: Managing a sprawling infrastructure

Having lots of powerful tools and hardware at your disposal is great, but it still needs to be managed properly to ensure that everything is implemented in a logical manner and that resources are not given away haphazardly without a thought to providing ongoing support. Leveraging tools like VRealize Operations has helped customers gain precise data center metrics to ensure that smooth operations continue. Many of those same customers also see benefits with VRealize Automation to provide for orchestration and provisioning.

To learn more about how Derive Technologies can address your needs, BOOK A FREE CONSULTATION

Derive offers numerous solutions to accommodate the wide variety of virtual workplace needs from its customers.

Infrastructure to Meet your Needs

Derive has extensive experience in architecture design and deployment of all sizes of virtual infrastructure, assisting organizations in handling any performance and/or scalability obstacles they might experience. Connecting the dots to make sure that all requirements are met, without saddling the organization with unnecessary subscription costs or costly hardware purchases, is our main priority.

Application Delivery and Desktop Virtualization

Derive has successfully deployed Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops solutions to numerous customers, providing Virtual Apps to organizations that need seamless management of their application delivery while minimizing the overall expenditure required to manage it. Virtual Desktops are a reliable and well-proven means of providing full end-to-end virtual workplace solutions to the end user for consistent productivity both in the office and outside it.

Even if virtual desktops are not the sole correct strategy for you, taking advantage of application virtualization technologies still helps your overall application and asset strategy by ensuring endpoint applications are always up-to-date and accessible to your users regardless of conditions external to your organization. This not only ensures productivity under all conditions but also the security of organizational data.

To learn more about how Derive Technologies can address your needs, BOOK A FREE CONSULTATION

partners

Derive Technologies has provided business and technological innovation for our clients through progressive, decades-long relationships with some of the world's most important providers of core infrastructure, cloud, mobility, collaboration, security and numerous other solutions.

DOWNLOAD CUTSHEET As a Dell Technologies Gold Certified channel partner, Derive represents Dell’s wide portfolio of datacenter, storage, cloud and desktop products plus related services. This includes:
Derive’s Premier Certification status with Cisco—and a long list of diverse technical certifications—enables fast, expert assessments, design, implementation, and support of today’s complex data network needs. Most of...
A highly valued channel partner, Citrix enables organizations to effectively support traditional office and remote virtual workforces with exceptional user experiences delivered via seamless VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) environments. Accompanied...
DOWNLOAD CUTSHEET Derive Technologies partners with Nutanix to deliver powerful IT solutions based on the vendor’s highly popular hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) technology. Derive and Nutanix can deliver the promise of HCI: A full IT...
Veeam is an industry-leading backup and data management platform for on-premises, cloud-based, and virtual computing environments. In addition to normal organizational concerns about data loss from the unexpected, like power outages, today’s threat...
Webair specializes on the data security needs of several industry verticals: Financial, Healthcare, and Government. It provides: Private cloud hosting, storage services, and VDI solutions Offsite backups of mission-critical data and...
DOWNLOAD CUT SHEET Derive Technologies partners with Gradient Cyber to deliver cybersecurity threat monitoring, detection, and response 24/7 across your entire IT infrastructure.  Gradient Cyber is a trusted cybersecurity partner operating primarily...
DOWNLOAD CUT SHEET Check Point Software is a worldwide provider of advanced cybersecurity solutions founded in 1993. Since then they’ve grown to provide a comprehensive suite of enterprise-level software, however their initial claim to fame was...
HP Inc. (HPI) provides a wide variety of endpoint devices like desktop and notebook computers, monitors, tablets, printers and imaging—along with a wealth of collaborative service offerings related to IT management—for small, medium and large...
Derive Technologies partners with HPE to deliver comprehensive computing, networking, and storage solutions, all with consumption-model (OPEX) options. Contact Derive for an informational briefing. HPE, formed after its split from the original Hewlett...
As a long-time Microsoft Gold Partner, Derive Technologies is highly experienced in delivering Microsoft’s solutions aimed at the enterprise and SMB space. Derive’s go-to solution portfolio includes Microsoft Windows, Microsoft 365, plus the...
Apple’s long-term relationship with Derive enables us to source, deploy, and support Apple devices and infrastructure for organizations that are both leading-edge and cost-effective. Derive has always taken special pride in being able to provide the...
VMWare is a premier provider of software solutions that enable organizations to operate multiple operating systems, applications, and computing workloads on a single server. By installing a hypervisor software layer on the server, one or more virtual...
Lenovo’s line of products extends well beyond its well-known and respected lineup of workstations, desktop computers, notebooks, laptops, ultrabooks, tablets, phones (Motorola) and monitors. The firm has extended its reach into the datacenter with...

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