Colin Gallagher
Vice President, Digital Infrastructure Product Marketing, Hitachi Vantara
February 23, 2021
Remote work has become the new norm. Companies have learned that it can be as productive as in-office work – or more – with a greater number of employees working remotely, part or full time. Leading industry analysts predict that the majority of companies will have a sizable chunk of the workforce working from remote positions.
But to do this, employers have to determine a long-term strategy to support a more distributed workforce and meet several challenges, including technology costs, scale and performance.
Today we announce Hitachi Infrastructure for Citrix Workspace, an integrated solution for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops targeted at customers who are looking to expand their digital workforce without adding complexity or compromising on performance. It combines compute, networking, storage and virtualization in a pre-integrated, pre-optimized turnkey solution to deliver a secure digital workspace. Designed and optimized for enterprise-scale Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, the integrated solution delivers an excellent user experience to all employees, anytime, anywhere and on any device.
(With Hitachi Unified Compute Platform and Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform E Series)
Permanent remote work means greater flexibility for employees to pick their location, devices or service provider. Higher adoption of remote work can propel productivity with asynchronous collaboration among distributed teams. Our new solution will help organizations develop a robust technology infrastructure that can support remote-first workspace while maintaining security and compliance. Remote workspace needs to support workers by introducing more and different devices for better productivity. Hitachi’s integrated infrastructure with all-NVMe storage solution eliminates noisy neighbor issues and delivers high virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) density to support a greater number of desktops.
Consistent experience across user sessions, such as computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM) or resource-hungry video-conferencing apps like Microsoft Teams, Skype or WebEx is key. That consistency is needed to prevent poor user experience that may lead to frustration and lost productivity. The widening choice of endpoints to connect to an enterprise VDI network may cause noncompliance and security gaps. Upgrade or replacement of end-user devices should be a seamless process that causes minimum disruption to maximize productivity.
Large organizations with diverse use cases may opt for a hybrid workspace approach with a combination of on-premises VDI and cloud desktop as a service. Our new VDI solution with Citrix desktop cloud delivers the flexibility to consume desktops on premises or off the external cloud. Flexible end-user administration is enabled through the choice of a hybrid cloud or on-premises administration.
Hitachi’s integrated VDI solution is designed and optimized for Citrix environments to deliver a turnkey experience while removing the guesswork in sizing and design. Rigorous engineering testing and optimizations led by Hitachi and partner teams deliver a predictable Citrix VDI platform. Ensuring continuous access to corporate apps is crucial for collaboration and innovation. Legendary 100% data availability with modern Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform E series systems coupled with a multisite architecture enables uptime for apps and data even in the event of multiple hardware, software or site failures.
Customers trust Hitachi with their business-critical Citrix VDI operations for user experience, scale, availability and business experience. You can count on the insights and expertise of Hitachi teams, which have implemented and supported tens of thousands of desktops spread across multiple sites. Full-stack VDI deployment and installation, including three-tier VDI infrastructure along with Citrix and Microsoft software stack, is performed by our world-class experts.
The new offering complements Hitachi’s VDI infrastructure portfolio to provide the flexibility for you to choose the best platform for your scale, simplicity and savings needs. Hitachi’s VDI solutions with VMware or Citrix can be designed and deployed on hyperconverged, converged or existing Hitachi VSP storage. The entire solution stack can be consumed either as a capital or operating expense (capex or opex), or as a managed service offering.
To learn more about Hitachi’s digital workspace infrastructure solutions, please visit www.hitachivantara.com/VDI or contact your Hitachi or partner’s representative.
Colin Gallagher is Vice President, Product Marketing at Hitachi Vantara.
Colin leads product marketing for storage systems and software, and converged/hyper-converged solutions. He has 25-years’ storage marketing and product management and has a passion for telling stories about technical products that help customers solve business challenges.
