From the need to secure data in heavily regulated industries such as banks and health care, to the weakening of the risks of BYOD guidelines (Bring Your Own Device), there are dozens of reasons for companies that invest in virtualized desktop infrastructures (VDI).
Nevertheless, VDI has remained a niche technology, which is often more provided to solve a certain provision or security problem than to offer the best possible experience to the users. There are several factors that have led to this situation, but one that is most freely faced with the company when deciding whether to accept VDI, a monumental gap in the talent.
A vicious circle
While IT-Skills bottlenecks are hardly any news, the VDI deficiency is even more dramatic than elsewhere in the industry, partly because it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. When new IT employees start, they inevitably spend their first years with physical machines. Since more virtualization is laid to cloud and thus external providers, there are even fewer ways for Junior -IT employees to learn something about VDI’s interior work.
This means that the vast majority of IT specialists, if they do not want to work in the VDI area, only get a superficial understanding of the desktop virtualization.
This has created a situation in which the demand for VDI increases at the same time, while the pool continues to shrink really knowledgeable employees. As a result, the burdens that have already been set up by VDI teams are tightened, and not only a serious risk of burnout is exposed, but also extended the problems that used a virtual desktop in the entire company.
Creating a VDI -Triage system
A helpful analogy is to be imagined how it would be if cars were treated as well as VDI. If every time someone had a problem with their vehicle – even something small as air in the tires or with gas – they had to send it to a specialist mechanic. The work volume would quickly overload all available repair workshops. But because most IT experts have so few VDI experience, even the smallest problems for L3 support can be escalated.
So what can be done? Realistically speaking, it is not sufficiently sufficiently sufficient proportion of IT workers to relieve the defect, especially in view of the fact that the virtualization infrastructure is far away from the only area of ​​technical use with such a problem. Instead, we have to democratize the initial phases of the treatment of VDI problems so that fast fixes and non-VDI problems can be triached by other people. This accelerates the renovation time and eliminates the demand that VDI specialists approach every little problem itself.
Zen and the art of VDI maintenance
In order to enable non-VDI specialists to triage VDI problems, there must be a clear system with which you can easily go through a handful of fundamental error-lan removal steps. Does the user have connectivity problems? Is the problem on the application page and not on the virtual desktop? Are there any obvious performance?
First and foremost, since the most common “VDI problem” is something that is not related to the virtual infrastructure, this approach enables IT teams to lead a variety of tickets to the right team. But more than that means that even real triage systems even those with almost zero know how VDI works under the bonnet can still carry out basic corrections and at the same time hand over more complex tickets in the chain.
The advantages here are diverse. The implementation of a triage system means above all that affected users can dissolve their problems faster, which can have an enormous impact on the productivity of companies. Second, of course, it will help you to give greater exposure to virtualized infrastructures in this area and possibly even absorb them as a career path. And finally, the workload in the VDI team can be radically reduced so that you can concentrate more on the most thorny problems.
Relocation on the left is not optional
Ultimately, the status quo for every company that wants to get a considerable value from its VDI investments is not durable. VDI can offer extended security and scalability, simpler compliance and lower total costs.
However, these advantages can only be determined if the VDI performance is good enough so that end users are as productive as on a physical machine. This does not happen if the problems are piling up and the harassed VDI teams are constantly fire brigade.
By properly, the companies that properly have the skills to properly shift the VDI maintenance, monitoring and funding, have the rare opportunity to solve three problems at the same time. The democratizing VDI maintenance spreads the workload of uniform, upskilling junior team members and reduces the effects on end users.