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DIGITAL WORKPLACE TRANSFORMATIONWHITEPAPERBy Brian Madden and Benny Tritsch | Version 1.5 | August 2016

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WHITEPAPER DIGITAL WORKPLACE TRANSFORMATION

CONTENT

1. TodayʼsSituation ................................................................................................................ 3

2. TheDigitalWorkplaceChallenge .................................................................................... 4

3. DesktopoftheFuture ......................................................................................................... 5

4. TheDigitalWorkplaceinDifferentEnterpriseMarkets ............................................ 7

5. BenefitsofTransformingtheWorkplace ...................................................................... 9

6. FiveStepstoTransformyourWorkplaces .................................................................. 10

7. OpportunityandRiskAnalysis ...................................................................................... 11

8. FinalThoughts .................................................................................................................. 13

AuthorsandContact ................................................................................................................... 14

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TODAy’S SITuATION

There’s lots of talk these days about the “digital workplace”. While there are many different views of what that actually means, most agree that many job roles are changing quickly and that IT is struggling to keep up. In large enterprises, the digital workplace is centered around the “enter-prise desktop”. This poses a challenge since while the digital workplace is changing quickly, the enterprise desktop is changing slowly. Sure, we see smartphone and tablet use in enterprises skyrocket, and even enterprise workers make heavy use of native mobile apps and web apps. But these “new” types of apps are somewhat separate from the “old” desktops that enterprises are built around. (In fact the enterprise desktop hasn’t really changed in the past 20 years!)

In the past year or two, we’ve started to see the pressure from the digital workplace transformation to change the enterprise desktop, even in markets that have been traditionally considered “slow” or “conservative”. It’s our belief (as we’ll lay out in this paper), that there are several root causes for the advent of a faster rate of change for the enterprise desktop.

First is that a growing number of enterprises (across a wide range of market segments) are demanding more flexible and cooperative work-styles in order to stay competitive. (Both with the products they offer and their ability to attract and retain employees.) Much of this is primarily driven as a response to disruptive strategies from new players in their market segments.

Second, modern context-aware work scenarios require workers to seam-lessly switch back and forth from mobile devices to large and interactive multi-screen setups, with new scenarios (augmented reality, etc.) around the corner. The digital workplace is about using the right form factor at the right time – not simply switching to smartphones and tablets and “new” apps.

Third, collaboration between enterprise users across different office locations, time zones and geographies is not an option anymore. Today, it’s a mandatory success factor for many business cases, even in small and medium-size enterprises. Synchronizing users’ workflows with unified communications, conferencing, collaborative document editing, enterprise file sharing, screen and video sharing, instant messaging, shared calendars and smart email filters is not an exception anymore. It is clearly an integral cornerstone of the modern digital workplace.

We’re also seeing technological advancements which are not traditionally associated with enterprise IT starting to affect the enterprise workplace. For example, artificial intelligence and machine learning are increasingly supporting the human decision processes (and, as a consequence, changing users’ workstyles). Natural machine interaction based on gesture and voice recognition has become a reality (again, even in the enterprise). Connected devices with a myriad of sensors and actors – also known as Internet of Things (IoT) – allow enterprises to create brand new use cases and business models that have not been possible before. Combining machine-collected and telemetry data with user-created data is leading to a growing relevance of big data processing, analytics, and visualization – requiring massive centralized compute resources (cloud services) to handle the sheer amount of such data.

And finally, enterprise IT workers have grown accustomed to the “rich” user experiences of consumer apps and gadgets, meaning they’re less willing to accept poor user experiences in the enterprise than ever before.

The challenge for IT is that this is all happening against a backdrop of the perceived constant “decline” of conventional Windows applications (increasingly referred to as “CWAs” by analysts). We are undoubtedly in the middle of an IT revolution. All this raises the legitimate question as to whether the Windows desktop and conventional Windows applications will continue to be the preferred digital workplace. From an enterprise IT perspective, this is the key question that must be honestly answered when planning the next digital workplace generation.

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ThE DIGITAL WORKPLACE ChALLENGE

Almost everyone with enterprise IT experience agrees that conventional Windows applications will not go away anytime soon. But with those appli-cations almost universally viewed as “legacy”, how does enterprise IT deal with this? There have been many attempts to “modernize” conventional Windows applications over the past few decades. For example, attempts have been made create tools which “rewrite” conventional Windows applications into more modern formats (native mobile, HTML5, Java, etc.). There are also various techniques to “remote” conventional Windows applications and desktops to modern devices and remove the dependency of Windows on users’ devices. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH, formerly known as Terminal Servers) and Desktop as a Service (DaaS) are the commonly used terms here.

More recently, technologies such as “app refactoring” (also called Rapid Mobile App Development – RMAD) have striven to twist and squeeze the user interface of conventional Windows applications running in data-centers onto the smaller touch-based screens of mobile devices.

But while each of these technologies has its niche uses, none has emerged as the silver bullet enterprises need to “solve” the evolution of the conventional Windows desktop and power the digital workplace transformation. The reason for this (which we find that many enterprises don’t fully appreciate) is that conventional Windows desktops and applications have been in place for decades. They are deeply ingrained in enterprise workflows and for years have “just worked”. Enterprises have evolved around the features and capabilities of these conventional apps, meaning that new-style replacement apps that don’t 100 % replicate the features and workflows of conventional apps will not be able to fully replace them.

Conventional Windows applications in the enterprise are also highly co-dependent on each other. (App A pulls reports from App B, using a report generator from App C, sending to a printer from App D, etc.)

The enterprise Windows desktop is really like a Rube Goldberg machine, which is popular term in the US describing an apparatus that was built to perform a simple task in a complicated fashion, generally including a chain reaction. Pulling just a single element out of such an apparatus (e.g. migrating or modernizing a Windows application) isn’t really possible. This means that conventional Windows applications and desktops are extremely difficult to migrate away from. This is not necessarily a bad thing, however, keeping conventional Windows applications and desktops just because they’re so ingrained is not necessarily a good thing!

A lot of the “new” advanced technologies (machine learning, AI, sensors, gesture and voice recognition, etc.) do not apply to conventional Windows applications. Plus, as new versions of Windows keep coming out – each seemingly focusing less on the “conventional” apps – means that it’s getting harder and harder for IT to keep all of their conventional Windows applications running smoothly. (Just look at how difficult it was for enter-prises to migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7, and now that they’re there, Windows 10 is around the corner and the process has to be repeated again!)

The other downside to keeping conventional Windows applications is that it can be difficult to add new functionality to them. Many of these apps are commercial apps whose developers have their own roadmaps and visions which may or may not match what a particular enterprise needs. And new requirements tend to be amorphous “it needs to work on mobile” which is not a simple “feature” that an app developer can just add to an application.

That said, enterprises can still find value figuring out how to “modernize” conventional Windows desktops and apps, combined with new app types (native mobile, HTML5), devices (phones and tablets), and cloud services (storage, authentication, collaboration) as we’ll describe in the remainder of this paper.

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DESKTOP OF ThE FuTuRE

An often-repeated mantra about the Windows desktop is, “It’s all about the apps, stupid.” There’s still a lot of truth in that, but in enterprise desktop environments, we’ve learned that applications don’t live in isolation (unlike apps do on smartphones). Conventional Windows applications must be embedded in a Windows desktop OS which provides a runtime and communication environment that allows for intuitive user navigation, system management, automation, and seamless inter-process communi-cation. Most enterprise workflows rely on different line-of-business applications being able to talk to each other, so in essence, the enterprise Windows desktop becomes a “container” for a collection of connected applications while providing the best possible user experience. Even newer concepts like “personas” for different users (or groups of users) are mapped back to the Windows desktop metaphor.

When referring to the enterprise desktop of the future, many people (and some industry analysts) talk about how the “desktop is dead” or the “keyboard is dead” (or even that “Windows is dead”). Certainly we’re seeing this with gadget-oriented consumers in using non-enterprise apps. But when it comes to sitting down at a desk and doing “real” focused work, users still prefer to use devices with keyboards, mice, and large screens (or multiple screens). The reality is that it’s impossible to replicate this experience on a mobile touch-based device.

Certainly some of this is due to the fact that mobile apps have only been around for a few years – versus a few decades for desktop apps – so it makes sense that mobile apps are not as mature and don’t have as many features as their desktop counterparts. Also, as we’ve eluded previously, mobile apps tend to run in isolated containers and don’t have the rich cross-app integration as conventional Windows applications made possible by the Windows desktop. Finally, sitting down and focusing on an app requires a desk and a large screen – the exact opposite of what mobile devices are designed for.

So we don’t see mobile devices (both smartphones and tablets) “replacing” their desktop counterparts, rather, we see them augmenting desktops. It’s all about the right tool for the right job. Use your desktop when you’re at your desk. Use your tablet when you’re in a meeting. Use your phone when you’re in the field. But this is easier said than done. Since conventional Windows applications are based on decades-old technology which run on different hardware and different OSes, written in different languages, it’s

not really possible to compile a “mobile version” of a conventional Windows application. (Look how long it took Microsoft to release Office for iOS and Android. They had to write that from scratch.)

Some vendors and analysts have suggested that using Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) is the solution to this – certainly it’s possible to provision mobile apps based on existing Active Directory users and groups – but the actual apps that go on mobile devices are wholly separate from the conventional Windows applications that run on the enterprise desktop that enterprises are built around. Sure, some enterprise apps have native mobile versions (Office, collaboration, file sharing, some line of business apps), but those represent a small subset of the applications users need to completely do their jobs.

This means that in order to get “real” work done “on the road”, enterprise workers still rely on conventional Windows applications – even if they want to access those apps from a mobile device. This further means that enterprises will be stuck with conventional Windows desktops as long as they have Windows applications critical to their business. In fact, it only takes a single critically important Windows application in an enterprise environment, to require that Windows desktop infrastructure be part of the digital workplace. This is referred to as the “long tail”, as shown in the picture below.

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We believe the historical digital workplace for enterprises is the conventional Windows desktop running conventional Windows applications. So any discussion of the “digital workplace transformation” in the enterprise context has to begin with a discussion about the desktop of the future.

#oftheWindowsAp

ps

ACCEPTANCE OF WEb / MObILE PLATFORMS

100 %

15 %

50 %

4–8 MILLION

WIndoWs

APPs

“Longtail”

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So even though there’s lots of talk about how good native mobile and HTML5 apps are in terms of security, usability, design, etc., with millions conventional Windows applications out there, enterprises cannot throw them away even if we’re living in a world of Windows Day Zero vulnerabilities and spear phishing attacks. That said, it’s certainly possible to “modernize” conventional Windows desktops and conventional Windows applications in a way that provides them to users as they want them while still supporting the needs of the business.

For example, desktop virtualization technologies such as VDI1), DaaS2), and RDSH3) can be used to both enhance the security of conventional Windows applications while also delivering them to users in more modern ways. All of these technologies mean that enterprises can run their conventional Windows desktops and apps in secure, modern datacenters, while just delivering the application’s user interface to the users. Thishasmanybenefitstosecurity,including:�� All internet traffic can be monitored (in both directions), which means

incoming traffic can be scanned for viruses, malware, and attacks, and outgoing traffic can be scanned to ensure that customer data, private records, and sensitive information is not leaked.�� Because the Windows desktops and applications are running in a

modern datacenter, they are always available to IT to patch them.�� They’re easier to backup, and to revert or restore if there is a problem.�� It’s possible to run advanced agents collecting telemetry data and to

enforce security settings, and IT can be sure these agents are running.�� The behavior and features of Windows applications and desktops can

be changed based on characteristics of the endpoint. Things like available applications, installed virus scanners, whether or not the user uses two-factor authentication, how secure the endpoint, or where the user is located can enable or disable features of the apps.�� Modern datacenter secure networking technologies (such as micro

VPNs and micro-segmentation of networks) can ensure that each application only has access to authorized servers and services.�� IT can run scans and monitor the entire Windows desktop estate all

in real time.�� A compromised (or lost/stolen) user device doesn’t lead to compromised

data since the data and apps aren’t actually running on that device.

RemotingandvirtualizingconventionalWindowsdesktopsand applicationsalsohasbenefitstousersandusability,including:�� Users can access their conventional Windows applications or desktops

from any device – not just Windows laptops or desktops. This means IT doesn’t have to worry about Mac or Linux users. It also means users can use mobile devices (any platform) and tablets.�� New applications can be deployed without touching a user’s end device.

1) VDI: Virtual Desktop Infrastructure 2) DaaS: Desktop as a Service 3) RDSH: Remote Desktop Session Host

�� Users can get consistent performance of their application even if they don’t have a fast computer or a fast network connection.�� Users can pick up where they left off, even if they were right in the

middle of composing an email or filling out a form.�� Users can have full access to their complete digital workspace without

needing to have anything with them. They can walk up to pretty much any device on the planet, visit a web page, authenticate, and pick up right where they left off.

Taking a look at these two lists of benefits for conventional Windows applications and desktops delivered via modern virtualization technologies is pretty impressive! These lists hit many of the “desires” of the future digital workplace while still fitting into the reality of enterprise dependence on conventional Windows environments. In other words, modern virtuali-zation-based delivery of conventional Windows applications and desktops is a critical component of a cloud-first, mobile-first, digital workplace strategy.

But wait a minute. The concept of remote enterprise desktops has been around for almost twenty years, yet it’s only enjoyed moderate success up until now. So why is that? Isn’t this just a dead end? The reality is that the remoting technology and infrastructure has only just become ready for prime time in the past few years. While the performance of remote desktops fell behind in the past, modern remoting environments deliver a better user experience than bare metal PCs or laptops if done right.

Several factors contribute to this, including dramatically improved remoting protocols, ubiquitous high-speed networks, and extreme hardware acceleration. Compute, transport, data and presentation layers are finally in the right balance to provide a great remote end user experience even for demanding use cases at reasonable prices.

The table below shows the relevant aspects of the digital workplace.

COMPuTE TRANSPORT DATA PRESENT / PRODuCE

CPU (more compute cores)

Wired connections

Storage Screens

GPU (graphics acceleration)

Wireless Big Data (IoT)

3D printers

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Mobile (3G, 4G, 5G)

Intellectual property

Augmented Reality (AR)

Machine Learning

Privacy Virtual Reality (VR)

Deep Learning

Security

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ThE DIGITAL WORKPLACE IN DIFFERENT ENTERPRISE MARKETS

Even as we outline the framework for a digital workspace transformation, many people tend to react in ways like, “This sounds good, but it will never work in my industry”. (Or “it will never work in my country”.) In an ideal world, the definition of the “digital workplace” would be homogeneous on a global scale. Unfortunately, this is not the case, as there is a wide spectrum across geographies and market segments. One end of the spectrum is defined by “disruptive” high-tech markets as we find them at places such as Silicon Valley, while the other end represents traditional markets which are still following the rules of the “old economy”. (And these are overlaid by global market sectors with very different general needs and local regulations.)

The simple truth is that there is no single blueprint of a digital workplace that works across all market segments. Certainly engineering, defense, energy, financial, healthcare, manufacturing, public administration, services, and utilities industries have their own particular usage needs and regulations. But there are also common themes across all markets. All demand a high level of agility in order to adapt to changing market conditions, all require high availability, all have security regulations, and all most attract and retain the best workers. Enterprises across all markets have to deal with timing too – doing the “right” things too early may be as counter- productive as doing them too late.

As a result, no enterprise or public administration can just adopt a full-blown digital workplace model as it may exist at another place. Instead they need to pick small and simple goals, because they already have all the complexity due to their sheer size (number of users and personas) or due to organizational workflows established over a long period of time (in addition to all the regulations and compliance rules they have to deal with). The preferred strategy is a phased approach rather than a “big bang” that leads to success.

In many cases the enterprise desktop is the ideal starting point when planning the digital workplace transformation, again since that’s the tradi-tional “hub” of the digital workplace. The goal is for an enterprise to be realistic about how they take their existing enterprise desktop as a basis for a more forward-thinking workplace. At the same time, it’s important to understand that what an enterprise does in the next few years will just be small incremental changes, because again the core infrastructure of how the enterprise desktop works today isn’t going to change that much anytime soon. But optimizing the enterprise desktop in terms of automation, self-service and perceived user experience has certainly a great potential to improve the overall quality. One of the challenges in implementing such a transformation scenario is that enterprises have to deal what’s being called “the consumerization of IT” of “shadow IT”. These concepts describe the reality of today’s world where individual users (or entire departments) now have the power to take IT into their own hands – without the enterprise IT’s knowledge or approval – to acquire and use their own devices, apps, and cloud services. (This is most often seen with individual users using non-approved file sharing, conferencing, and collaboration apps and services).

So the challenge for enterprise IT is to balance the demands of the users with the existing enterprise applications. IT cannot cut off users from communicating and sharing, but they still need to maintain control. In certain markets, this control will be easier than others. For example, in healthcare, individual nurses do not have the option to not use the enter-prise patient management system, but they do have the option – even if it’s unapproved – to collaborate on patient cases with unapproved chat apps or to take and share notes with unapproved cloud services. So in healthcare, you need to provide access to all the apps that users want to use regardless of whether you want to or not.

If you’re in the construction or manufacturing market, you need to prevent your intellectual property from leaking. But you may also want to outsource design work or allow your CAD / CAM designers to have their latest product designs reviewed on the production floor. If you’re in the automotive industry, electric cars, car sharing, augmented reality for car maintenance, and improved industrial automation challenge your well-established business model. You need to open up new communication paths without damaging your brand. If you’re in the energy and utility market, high up-front investments, rapidly changing retail prices, and global distribution channels require strictly controlled production workflows and sales processes. These examples are only the tip of the iceberg.

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The table below lists a rough overview of the market segments and their respective preferred digital workplace concepts.

It’s interesting to note that countries that belong to the “emerging markets” seem to have a lot in common with disruptive markets in terms of agility and usage of mobile devices – all at a higher risk level. Traditional enterprises in developed markets appear to be carrying a much bigger burden of legacy that cannot be changed so easily. This may become a challenge in the high technology sectors, such as aerospace, automotive, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, bioinformatics, computer engineering, infor-mation technology, nanotechnology, nuclear physics, photonics, robotics, semiconductors, and telecommunications. Established high-tech players in developed markets cannot afford to wait too long with their workspace transformation projects if they don’t want to be rendered irrelevant.

The key is figuring out what the most important business needs are and where the users’ pain points are, and then figuring out how you can address them both at the same time. The problem is that most pain

points around enterprise applications have to do with processes that are ingrained in the applications. Those pain points don’t change regardless of whether you use a traditional desktop, a virtual desktop, a desktop as a service, or the cloud. This does not mean you should not try to address those pain points – it’s just that they are much more complex than the simple answer of “move the desktop to DaaS”.

But they are also not addressed by new client devices and other new tech toys. The real challenge for IT is that users want to use what they want to use, but IT’s hands are tied by the applications because we have to use what we have to use, regardless of what the users want. In summary, there is really no obvious solution. You cannot just say, “Hey, let’s just upgrade to the mobile / web / new version of some obscure line of business application we have been using for the past 20 years”, because in many cases, that simply doesn’t exist.

MARKET SECTORS DESCRIPTION PRIMARy DIGITAL WORKPLACE

Agriculture Farming, fishing, forestry Desktops and IoT

Construction&Engineering Buildings, factories, industrial plants Primarily desktops and some high-performance computing

Defense Military equipment, weaponry Secure desktops and mobile devices

Education Schools, universities, research Desktops and mobile devices

Energy Oil, natural gas, coal (mining) Primarily desktops and some high-performance computing

Financials Banks, insurances, real estate, investment trusts Primarily desktops and some high-performance computing

Healthcare Hospitals, medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, fitness/wellness tracking Secure desktops, mobile devices, IoT and augmented reality

InformationTechnology Semiconductors, network equipment, computer hardware, nanotechnology, software, IT services, consulting

Desktops and mobile devices

Manufacturing Automotive, shipbuilding, aircraft, spacecraft, robotics, personal goods, household goods

Desktops, augmented reality and IoT, Mobile devices for special use cases

MassMedia Film, music, broadcasting, news, publishing, digital content Large screens, high-performance computing and mobile devices

Materials Chemicals, biotechnology, metals, wood, paper products Primarily desktops

PublicAdministration City, state and federal management, legislative activities, taxation, budgetary, public order, compulsory social security

Primarily desktops

Services Logistics, postal services, accommodation, food, travel, leisure, arts, entertainment, recreation

Desktops and mobile devices

Telecommunication Fixed-line and wireless telecommunication networks Desktops and mobile devices

Trading Wholesale trade, retail trade Desktops and mobile devices

Transportation Operating airports, trains, buses, ships Desktops and mobile devices

Utilities Providing electric power, natural gas, water, sewerage, waste management Desktops, mobile devices and IoT

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bENEFITS OF TRANSFORMING ThE WORKPLACE

By now it should be clear that “doing nothing” is not an option. So perhaps the biggest benefit of “transforming the workplace” is that your users are going to transform their workplace with or without your support, so you may as well get on board. But to really look at the benefits, we have to define what exactly “transforming the workplace” means, as every organization tends to define it differently (even those who believe they have successfully done it).

Again, from the perspective of enterprise IT, the workplace is centered around the conventional Windows desktop (or at least conventional Windows applications). Due to this ingrained nature, IT professionals tend to get scared when words like “transformation” are thrown around. While that’s certainly understandable, most of the negative response is more about emotions than it is about the technical facts.Typically, the first step in a digital workplace transformation process is the migration of conventional local Windows desktops to virtual desktops and remote sessions. With a physical machine under their desks, most users still believe this setup provides the ultimate desktop performance. While this was true even recently, today’s remoting technologies are able to provide the same performance range as (or even beat) a physical PC or laptop.

In modern, well-managed LANs, where bandwidth, latency, and / or packet loss is not an issue, and with modern virtual desktop hardware based on solid state storage with GPUs1), perceived graphics and media performance can be outstanding. The users benefit from this as they can consistently use the same desktop at their standard workplace, in meeting rooms, and from home when connected. User interface response times are not noticeably different, but data and document load times tend to be much faster in remoting environments as file and database servers are typically connected to the remoting hosts over high-speed backbones. (Ironically this was one of the selling points of remote desktops twenty years ago, and it still holds true today. The difference today is that thanks to modern technologies, we can “remote” many more types of conventional Windows applications than we could twenty years ago.)

That said, when users need to connect from subsidiaries or branch loca-tions, things are a bit more complicated. The reason for this is that IT tech-nology cannot beat the laws of physics. Bandwidth constraints combined with network latency simply degrades user experience in remoting environ-ments, sometimes to a level where it becomes unusable. Unlike a couple of years ago, users are not willing to accept this anymore. In such a case, shadow IT will start sprawling, sponsored by those remote departments generating their share of results and revenue. And there is nothing enter-prise IT can do, as they simply cannot stop users from bringing their smartphones and tablets to work or buying their own cloud-based services and apps which they use from their own devices over their own networks.

But from our experience, it’s not the users or the operating department heads that are to be blamed when the acceptance rate for virtual desktops and remote sessions is low. We have found that the traditional concept of “silos” in enterprise IT departments is preventing a successful workplace transformation in many cases. As a result, organizational structures with competing client, server, application packaging, network, mobile devices, security, data and software development departments must be transformed into agile “DevOps” teams with a common mission. This organizational transformation needs to happen before the workplace transformation starts, but it hardly comes without pain.

Breaking up long-established IT professional teams and creating new teams with end-to-end responsibilities is no simple task. But if done right, quality metrics such as internal service level agreements, IT service quality levels, and user experience scores can be established much easier than ever before. This not only benefits users, but is also a prerequisite for the next phase. And to be clear, this all must be seen as a strategic initiative with the executive management in the driver’s seat. As an extra benefit, the renewed digital workplace management can be used as a strategic tool supporting business goals.

We’re also seeing a huge benefit for moving conventional Windows desktops and applications, and HTML5 applications, to the public cloud. This is something that many organizations have traditional resisted. But as cloud technologies and cloud providers have matured, we find that in many cases, cloud providers can deliver applications with higher reliability, higher security, higher performance, and at a lower cost than enterprises can internally. (And with proliferation of market-specific and country- specific clouds, this is even easier now than it was just a few years ago.)

Modern cloud-based service fabrics and local caching infrastructure can be used to embed cloud-hosted conventional Windows applications and deliver them in a modern, consumption-based service model. As VDI morphs into the private or public cloud-based form factor called Desktop as a Service (DaaS), users interact with their applications in a self-designed work grid. In essence, it’s an adaptable digital workplace as a service built around conventional Windows desktops and applications. In addition, there is also a growing number of popular applications hosted in the public cloud. Offerings such as Microsoft Office365, GoogleApps or Salesforce are enjoying a rapidly growing adaption rate. Seamlessly integrating such applications delivered in modern, non-standard service models by different vendors into the enterprise Windows desktop adds another level of com-plexity. But it’s worth the effort. As a result, the future workplace is an aggregator in a hybrid application landscape, including unified monitoring, reporting and management. In such an environment the nature of an application doesn’t really matter anymore.

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1) GPUs: Graphics Processing Units

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FIvE STEPS TO TRANSFORM yOuR WORKPLACES

Like all major IT projects, implementing a digital workplace transformation will be a phased project over several years. And in many ways, you may never “finish”, because the continuously refining process you use to evaluate and migrate may be something you keep doing forever – much like how the conventional desktop upgrade cycle was never-ending.

Your ultimate “goal” might be move all your Windows desktops into the datacenter, to move some conventional Windows applications to the cloud, and to convert other Windows applications to native mobile or HTML5 apps. While that’s a noble target, it makes sense to start smaller, like focus on implementing a better-managed Windows desktop, focus on moving Windows desktops into the datacenter, or focus on selecting a few critical line-of-business applications and migrating them to versions that have native mobile clients.

Takingallthisintoaccount,thedigitalworkplacetransformation canseemoverwhelming.Wehaveidentifiedfivestepsenterprise ITdepartmentscantaketotransformtheirconventionalWindows environmentsintomoderndigitalworkspaces.

STEP 1: Identifyyourworkplacetransformationgoalsandconvert intoaphasedplan. The first step to transforming your own workplace is to figure out what exactly you want to do and how you want to do it. Unfor-tunately setting a goal like “we want to be more agile” sounds good in a PowerPoint presentation, but is hard to implement in a concrete way.

STEP 2: Picka“firstmover”group.Define the required applications and the delivery mechanism (Windows, Web or mobile app) for this particular group of users. It may be a good idea to start with relatively simple group, like external contractors. A key element of this step is communica-tion. Talk to selected users in this group and listen carefully to what their most important requirements are. Always keep them in the loop about your plans and activities. If everything works well, they will be your strongest supporters in the future.

STEP 3:Identifythethreemostimportantusecasesanddefine theirrespectivesuccesscriteria.This step includes the identification of common workflows and related application sets. The result is an imple-mentation model that suites the target group and the selected use cases. Benchmarking perceived user experience in a reference environment (including WAN emulators) should always be part of this step, simulating the use cases and objectively measuring factors such as user interface response times, graphics performance and media types supported. This will help you with users’ expectation management. Always keep in mind that you want to maximize user acceptance rate.

STEP 4: Deploythenewworkplaceandmonitoritshealth.When your first mover group starts working with their new workplace, make sure that you are (temporarily) keeping track of telemetry and performance data. Make sure that you are never walking in the dark in the early stage of the deployment. Constantly tracking and visualizing the workplace health and usage data will allow you to identify issues quickly and compare the real performance with your benchmarking results collected in the previous step.

STEP 5: Usethelessonslearnedwhenmovingontothenextusergroupinyourphasedplan. When you finally “finish”, be prepared to start over. The end of one phase is the beginning of the next phase, again following the same steps. In fact, this digital workplace transformation should not be viewed as a traditional IT project with a beginning and end, but rather a persistent and ongoing cycle which is just the way enterprise IT is now.

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OPPORTuNITy AND RISK ANALySIS

Doingnothing,leadinguserstotakematter intotheirownhandswithshadowIT. As we’ve mentioned already, if you do nothing, that doesn’t mean that users will just accept the “old” way of doing things. Users are going to figure out how to work in the ways they want to work, regardless of whether IT supports or drives this. So if you do nothing, you’re essentially inviting users to take matters into their own hands and figure out their own solutions. In other words, this digital workspace transformation will happen regardless of whether you are involved or not. You have to choose to lead it versus being dragged along by your users.

Notunderstanding/trustingthepubliccloud. It’s 2016. Not trusting the cloud is not an option. Every enterprise has data in the cloud (whether IT knows it or not). There are plenty of cloud options to support every use case (government clouds, in-country clouds, etc.). Even if you don’t fully embrace the public cloud, you can still build cloud-like datacenters (private cloud) to provide the workplace services to your users and then be strategic about which elements of your workplace are hosted in the public cloud and which are hosted in your own private cloud.

Movingapoorly-manageddesktoptoVDI/DaaS/RDSH. If your current conventional Windows desktop estate is mess, you can’t just move that to VDI / DaaS / RDSH as it is. Doing so will lead to frustration as you’ll have to deal with your existing management mess with the additional elements of desktop virtualization.

ThinkingVDI/DaaS/RDSHwillautomaticallylead tobettermanagement. This is similar to the previous risk. VDI, DaaS, and RDSH are just alternate forms of delivering conventional Windows desktops and applications to users. While it is certainly possible to design a better managed VDI, DaaS, or RDSH environment, simply moving your existing desktop estate into a virtual model is not a “free pass” for better management.

The opportunity for digital workplace transformation should be clear by now. But what about the risks? (Both of not doing anything and of doing the wrong things.) We’ve identified the following risks that enterprises need to consider as they’re making their plans.

Tryingtodotoomuchatonce. We already discussed breaking down your goals into smaller, manageable pieces. Enterprises who try to do too much at once are destined to fail. We saw this countless times as enterprises tried (and failed) to move to VDI in a big way a few years ago. For example, many companies with traditional “Wild West” Windows XP-based conventional local Windows desktops where users had admin rights and could do whatever they want wanted to embrace VDI. But when they went to VDI, they tried to go from fully persistent, every-user-is-different desktops to locked-down, non-persistent, centralized desktops. And they went from Windows XP to Windows 7. And they tried to implement app virtualization. And they tried to implement user environment management. And they tried to go from 32-bit to 64-bit Windows. The result was failure as users were upset and the engineering efforts were overwhelming. Unfortunately, these failures were labeled as “VDI failures” even though the failure had nothing to do with VDI – it was because they tried to change too much of their decades-old Windows way of doing things at once.

DoingabadVDI / DaaS / RDSHdeployment,leadingusersto notlikeit,buttheydon’tlikeitforthewrongreasons. The center of the digital workspace is the enterprise Windows desktop. If you virtualize those desktops (with VDI, DaaS, RDSH, etc.) but you do a poor job of it, then users will revolt. Unfortunately, they’re not revolting against the desktop transformation concept, rather, they’re revolting against your specific implementation of it. (Either way, you fail.) So when you design your virtual desktop environment, you need to be realistic about what you’re building. Don’t cut corners on server sizing. Don’t try to cram too many users on one server to save money. Don’t skip out on GPUs. Make sure the network latency between your users and their virtual desktops is under 50ms. Make sure you have enough bandwidth.

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TryingtosavemoneywithVDI/DaaS/RDSH(e.g.cuttingcorners forstorageperformance,noGPUs,etc.,leadingtounhappyusers). We’ve said and written for years that desktop virtualization is not about saving money in most cases. To some extent, the same is true for a digital workplace transformation. Sure, many of these technologies are the most cost-effective way to deliver new workspaces to your users, but a digital workspace transformation is not only about saving money or cutting costs – it’s about delivering the workplace experience that supports your business and that your users expect. So don’t make cost savings your primary goal. TryingtoreplaceconventionalWindowsapplicationswithnativemobileorHTML5appsthatdon’thavethesamefunctionalityorintegration. It’s important to respect the complexity of conventional Windows desktops and applications that have been built up in the enterprise over the past two decades. All too often, enterprises have rushed to “replace” convention Windows applications with their trendier native mobile or HTML5 counter-parts – only to realize too late that the “new” app doesn’t provide the same functionality or integration that the conventional app had. This leads to the “worst of both worlds” scenario where you have a new native mobile or HTML5 app to support while also not being able to decommission the conventional Windows application – meaning you have essentially doubled your management and cost efforts while creating an environment that’s more confusing for users.

NotrespectingthattheWindowsdesktopisthecenterof theworkplacetoday. Again, there’s 20+ years of institutional knowledge in the conventional Windows desktop. Lots of conventional Windows applications integrate with each other and with backend systems in ways that evolved over the past 20 years. You are not going to replace those overnight with native mobile and HTML5 apps.

ThinkingthatvirtualizingconventionalWindowsdesktopsand appswillsolveeverything. Early attempts to “solve” the mobile challenge from the enterprise perspective involved using EMM to manage devices as well as desktop and use application virtualization to deliver conventional Windows applications to phones and tablets. Unfortunately, neither of these really solved the problem. EMM doesn’t solve the issue of app selection or integrating native mobile apps with enterprise workflows based on conven-tional Windows applications. And VDI or DaaS don’t auto-magically turn a desktop app into a mobile app. So while virtualizing conventional Windows environments is a key element of a digital workspace transfor-mation, it’s not the only element, and relying too heavily on it can be a risk for failure.

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FINAL ThOuGhTS

The bottom line is that the workspace is changing, even in the enterprise. This is driven by the fact that users are using multiple device types and they are increasingly working from everywhere and in a collaborative manner. Users see and use consumer apps and devices and want to use them for their jobs too. That said, the conventional Windows desktop is the hub of the enterprise digital workplace, and it will be for many years to come. Adding native mobile and HTML5 apps is important, but they won’t be everything.

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At the end of the day, enterprise IT organizations will have to implement a program of continuous app evaluation – figuring out which apps should be delivered in which ways, and which conventional Windows apps can be replaced by (or augmented by) newer-style applications. The user landscape is changing. If enterprise IT does nothing, users will continue to adopt new ways of working and new types of applications. It’s important that enterprise IT is a leader and not a follower in the future that is inevitable.

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CONTACTHeike RiedingerTelephone: +49 175 9373390Email: [email protected]

PubLIShED byT-Systems International GmbHHahnstrasse 43d60528 Frankfurt am Main, Germany

BrianMadden was in the IT industry for 21 years where he was known as an opinionated, technical, and fiercely independent desktop virtuali-zation expert. He wrote five books and over 2,000 articles about desktop and application virtualization. He founded BrianMadden.com in 2003 and created the BriForum conference which ran from 2005–2016.

Dr.BennyTritsch is a solution architect, market analyst, community leader, author and founder of DrTritsch.com. He is a Subject Matter Expert in IT virtualization, user workspace management and monitoring, Cloud technologies, enterprise mobility, graphics remoting and remote end user experience benchmarking. In his role as a principal consultant and technical evangelist he works with customers and partners across Europe and North America.

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