EC News DeskGEC Media Group, Dell Technologies, Ingram Micro, and Intel successfully completed a high profile executive round table, around the theme of Transformation of Workforce using Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, VDI. The executive roundtable event was completed at the Rixos, JBR Dubai on 29 January 2020.
Over fifteen top executives, from end user organisations, responsible for managing systems and infrastructure in enterprises, across multiple market segments including hospitality, healthcare, diversified business, operations, services took part in the roundtable discussion. The discussion was moderated by GEC Media Group’s Editor, Arun Shankar.
The top end user executives were from Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Company, Al Habtoor Group, Canadian Specialist Hospital, Ceasers Bluewater Dubai, Cure Medical Centres, Gargash Hospital, Habtoor Hospitality, Holiday Factory, Landmark Hospitality, Neuro Spinal Hospitals, RDK Group Abu Dhabi, Rotana Hotel, and Saudi German Hospital.
The presentations and discussions were led by Katia Merheb, Field Marketing Manager for Client Solutions at Dell Technologies; Arjun Singh, Technical Consultant, Dell Technologies Ingram Micro; and Ashraf Helmy, Regional Channel Sales, Dell Technologies.
Katia Merheb explained that there is a transformation happening in how workers have access to devices. In the traditional way of using clients and applications, where the control is at the client, it can take as much as 7 workdays to deploy 1,000 devices on an enterprise network. IT decision makers spend up to 25% of their time monitoring and troubleshooting, while 53% of IT leaders are struggling to keep up with the increasing diversity of devices.
Dell Technologies and VMware offer a solution for unified end point management called Workspace One. Workspace One can manage and administer a heterogeneous client environment including Windows, MacOS, Chrome OS, Android, iOS, amongst others. SecureWorks takes care of the security associated around the client administration.
Singh talked extensively on the technology and architecture of hyper convergence and how it supports the use case of VDI. VDI, is defined as the hosting of desktop environments on a central server. It is a form of desktop virtualisation, as the specific desktop images run within virtual machines and are delivered to end clients over a network.
Singh explained the types of hyper converged systems available from Dell Technologies and how they can be applied to various VDI uses cases. He also pointed out the inbuilt Nvidia GPU infrastructure inside Dell HCI allowing high end graphics to be displayed at the end point devices. Ashraf Helmy’s presentation was about data protection at the server system through backup and recovery solutions.
During the round table there were extensive discussions between the top end user executives and the presenters from Dell Technologies and Ingram Micro. This covered the road map of migration from existing hardware clients to VDI type clients, the long-term benefits of using Workspace One as an administrative console, and how to calculate the total cost of ownership.
The roundtable discussion was concluded and the end user executives and the team from Dell Technologies and Ingram Micro continued their informal networking over dinner.
By Arun Shankar
