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As an infrastructure services company that customers rely on for 24 x 7 availability, Webscale requires real-time access to data as a critical resource to understand the health of each customer’s site performance. Yet, gaining central insights from the company’s multiple tools and disparate data sets was proving to be a challenge. The tools required login and data analysis for each customer instance, which was a manual, time-consuming effort that consumed 500 hours per month. “As a global company, we wanted to scale our data analysis capabilities and equip our teams with real-time observational insights. We set out with the goal to gain a centralized data lake from a solution that would enable us to build infrastructure monitoring, alerting and in-depth intelligence about our infrastructure and our customer performance,” said Nithyanand (Nith) Mehta, VP and GM at Webscale.

Rapidly growing Liquid sought a cloud-based machine data application to support its entire globally distributed team and multi-cloud technology stack. The new solution would be responsible for helping identify and resolve operational difficulties while also providing vital guidance to thwart malicious efforts from a range of hostile perpetrators.

Alaska Airlines embarked on a major initiative to move its monolith website and supporting applications from running on servers in data centers to the cloud. Essential to this initiative was the need to maintain observability data and insights on application performance to ensure the migration was smooth and didn’t negatively impact customers. However, the company’s incumbent application performance management solution was cost-prohibitive and wasn’t a good fit for the new cloud environments.

Maintaining separate, dedicated information processing environments for financial institutions is an exceptionally intricate endeavor that generates massive amounts of machine data. Cardlytics sought a comprehensive, technology-backed strategy to aggregate and manage this information across the entire organization. The new solution would need to enable users to correct defects without requesting extensive hand-holding; it would also need to satisfy stringent support and service level obligations for the company’s most important clients.

With a small security team, the company needed to enhance its security posture for improved real-time visibility. As a financial services firm serving customers in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Singapore, Latitude Financial must adhere to a range of regional compliance requirements. This required the company to reexamine its IT security investments and processes. At the time, the security team consisted of three analysts and overall security operations were heavily reliant on a third-party managed security services provider (MSSP). Internally, Latitude Financial had adopted Sumo Logic for log management, but, on the security front, the company didn’t have a security information and event management (SIEM) solution in place, and there was no end-to-end real-time visibility into the security state of the environment.

Collectively supporting cloud infrastructure for tens of thousands of customers and HashiCorp itself generates massive volumes of various events. Sifting through this telemetry to conduct a single security investigation and search on a series of related events was a time-consuming process for the security team, plagued with excruciatingly slow search results.

When adopting a SIEM solution, Roku needed to avoid alert fatigue and stay agile to quickly address true issues. Maintaining a strong security posture is essential for Roku. “Our security team works day and night to protect the infrastructure and provide a reliable service for our customers. Our customers and their trust are important for us,” shared Huseyin Karaarslan, Sr. Security Engineer at Roku. As an important part of this strategy, Roku wanted to adopt a SIEM solution to gain cyber situational awareness and an ongoing picture of the company’s environment.

The government solutions provider’s security team faced significant challenges in maintaining visibility across multiple remote sites. Without addressing the problem at each remote office, it was impossible to detect if an attacker was targeting one office and then expanding efforts throughout the company. The team lacked access at the network level and had no practical way of identifying such threats in real-time. Analysts had to painstakingly go through historical packet capture data to search for past attack patterns while also managing new threats. Despite leveraging AI and machine learning in their antivirus solutions, they needed a more effective way to improve threat detection and network visibility.

Medidata needed to improve its level of transparency into security events on its systems, help substantiate its high level of security diligence to clients, prevent data leakage, and be able to analyze attacks in near real-time. The team needed to do so without having to depend upon outdated signature-based or intrusion detection systems that issue countless false positives when tuned too tightly, or miss incidents altogether when tuned too loosely. Additionally, Medidata's clients were concerned about the security of their cloud-based systems, necessitating a solution that could provide comprehensive security insights for both on-premises and cloud environments.

Pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers rely on Medidata’s solution to power the studies that determine whether their products are ready for delivery to the market. Medidata was generating a tremendous volume of logs from its systems, but this raw, unprocessed data was neither centralized nor efficiently scrutinized. At any given moment, Medidata’s customers are managing more than 5,000 active clinical trials on its platform. This means that, on average, every hour the company must respond to greater than 1 million transactions composed of 3,000 unique logins, up to 300,000 patient data page requests, and 150,000 Web service API calls. The company’s management set a goal to democratize access to its machine data as a critical precursor towards increasing the quality and availability of its Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings.

In November 2016, Econet Media selected the Verimatrix VCAS platform to secure its Kwesé TV satellite-delivered DTH service. With an emphasis on premium live sports content, revenue security was a major consideration. In September 2017, Econet launched the Kwesé Play streaming TV service in South Africa, featuring Netflix through an exclusive partnership. The next phase aimed to offer multi-screen TV Everywhere services to its DTH subscribers, requiring adaptive bit rate streaming and content security for various OTT devices.

The Cyprus Telecommunications Authority (Cyta) faced the challenge of securing its IPTV services against piracy and unauthorized access. As a key player in the local IPTV market, Cyta needed a comprehensive security solution that could not only protect its current services but also scale with future growth and service expansion. The organization required a system that could integrate forensic watermarking capabilities to track and enforce content rights effectively. Additionally, Cyta sought a solution that offered flexible deployment options to adapt to various operational needs and ensure seamless integration with existing subsystems.

As Project Analyst in the End User Services Department of Information Technology for McHenry County College (MCC), Allen Vaughn and his colleagues are responsible for ensuring that faculty, staff, and students have access to the College’s applications and data in an easy and convenient manner. However, the rapid growth in student enrollment and use of technology at MCC in recent years pushed the limits of the college’s IT systems, resulting in reduced performance of its Microsoft Active Directory roaming profile environment. This environment is used to manage individual user accounts and deliver script-based drive mappings, printer mappings, and large numbers of Microsoft AD Group policies. This methodology resulted in typical login times for a Microsoft XP-based system ranging from two to five minutes, with more extreme cases exceeding the 10-minute range. In 2010, MCC spent 550 man-hours addressing various issues related to the Active Directory roaming profile environment, including corrupted profiles, mapping printers, and repairing favorites among other problems. With over 1,000 employee accounts and close to 10,000 student accounts, MCC had simply outgrown the capabilities of the Microsoft solution.

Old Dominion Truck Leasing faced several challenges with their aging desktop infrastructure, primarily consisting of Windows XP machines that were 8 to 10 years old. The company needed to virtualize this outdated infrastructure to support a mobile salesforce and efficiently manage virtual user profiles. Additionally, they required a solution to speed up imaging and recovery processes while ensuring data security. The existing setup was time and labor-intensive, with user profiles and data being managed locally, making the process of reimaging computers and migrating users cumbersome.

Viterra, a leading agribusiness company, faced significant challenges with its terminal server environment, which was struggling to support nearly 4,000 users. The company experienced issues with corrupt profiles, slow logon times, and general system performance degradation. Roaming profiles often became bloated, leading to reduced performance and delayed logon times. These issues were adversely impacting user productivity, especially during peak load periods when users experienced slowdowns or frozen sessions. The cluttered environment, filled with logon scripts, group policies, and batch files accumulated over the years, further exacerbated the system's inefficiencies. Viterra needed a solution to address these challenges and ensure a seamless migration to a more efficient and user-friendly environment.

The Tyler Independent School District (ISD) faced significant challenges with its aging desktop infrastructure, which included computers that were at least six years old, with some being as old as 14 years. These outdated systems led to various issues, such as extremely long logon times, which hindered the educational experience for students. The district aimed to improve the quality of student education by upgrading its desktop technology. However, the situation became more complicated when the district faced a $5 million budget cut, which forced them to scale down their initial VDI deployment target from 4,000 desktops to 2,500. Despite the budget constraints, the district needed to replace nearly all of its student computers, including those in video editing classes and labs, and also address the aging machines used by teachers and administrative staff.

James Brummett, Technical Director, and Greg Lubben, Desktop Engineer, were in the process of implementing a VDI project with VMware Horizon View 5.2. The primary objective of their VDI project was to provide a consistent and reliable desktop experience where users can access everything they need, anywhere they are, and from any device. “First and foremost it was about significantly rethinking and improving the care provider experience,” said James. “Centralizing our desktop delivery also allowed us to securely manage company data from within the data center and ensure adherence to standards.” Delivering secure and managed desktops in the hospital environment has unique challenges: staff use machines interchangeably, travel throughout and between campuses, and multiple logins were required within a single clinical workflow. In the midst of their VDI implementation, James and Greg found that Windows logon times were excessively long, which would create frustration and reduce the productivity of their clinical staff. “We knew that long logon times are unacceptable in a hospital setting,” said James, “In our VDI sandbox we found that initial Windows logons were taking as a long as one minute and thirty seconds - which would have derailed the success of our VDI project.” With clinicians traveling in and out of the hospital on a daily basis, it was critical to manage application variables based on location. Controlling printing is a particular challenge in the healthcare environment. As nurses travel throughout floors, for example, their printer settings must adjust with them, ensuring documents are printed at the nearest printer rather than the last printer used. When mistakes were made, confidential patient information could print somewhere else in the organization.

In 2008, Surrey County Council underwent an IT infrastructure overhaul to replace an aging and disparate legacy system built on PCs running Windows. The council aimed to reduce power requirements and costs while resolving performance issues at various sites. With staff increasingly on the move, there was a growing need for users to access their desktops remotely. The old system was replaced with a Citrix XenApp farm, capable of delivering core applications to both thin and fat client platforms. However, challenges persisted, including the need to control user application entitlement, ensure maximum users per server, and address slow logon speeds at some sites with restrictive WANs.

The existing infrastructure at O'Neill presented several limitations that needed to be resolved to maintain their ambitious agenda. The applications delivered to employees' desktops and laptops were presented through a Citrix XenApp 5 platform, including a mission-critical ERP application and a global product data management application. However, the previous workspace management solution from a Dutch vendor had several limitations and restrictions, causing daily issues for both users and IT. Application availability and performance were often unacceptable due to memory management issues in the ERP application within the Citrix XenApp environment. This prevented other business applications from launching, reducing user productivity and increasing helpdesk calls. Additionally, users experienced long login times due to the limitations of the previous workspace management solution, with login times approaching 2 minutes. This was a significant user dissatisfaction issue. Furthermore, the previous solution did not provide the flexibility needed for user settings, making it difficult for IT to provide exceptions and specific user environment policies. To address these challenges and improve user management, O'Neill decided to assess other alternatives, with AppSense being the obvious choice.

The Co-operative Group faced several challenges, including the need for a seamless user experience across all physical and virtual desktops, increased manageability of the desktop environment, support for remote workers, and a reduction in costs. The company was rapidly expanding and building a new state-of-the-art headquarters, aiming to reduce its carbon footprint through desktop virtualization. They conducted a successful 250-user pilot with Citrix XenDesktop and planned to roll out over 3,000 virtual desktops over the next two years. The company also needed a flexible working strategy to allow employees access to their desktops at all times and from any location, with over 1,000 virtual desktops dedicated to remote workers.

Bolton NHS Foundation Trust faced the challenge of implementing a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and migrating to Windows 7 with minimal disruption to clinical staff. The Trust needed to ensure the availability of applications for over 4,000 clinical staff across more than 30 sites, while protecting information security and patient safety. The existing virtualized desktops were outdated, and the Trust inherited old desktop equipment that needed modernization. A phased roll-out was necessary to avoid impacting patient care, requiring a solution that allowed users to move between desktops easily during the migration.

At the end of 2010, the RIVM had an outdated environment. The systems were slow, information was sometimes difficult to access and there was little control over license use. The DWR program offers a vision for the future. Frank Schuler was the coordinator of workplace support and had, as one of the few employees in the technology department, a great deal of experience with virtualization. Because of this, he participated in the large-scale workplace renewal project as an expert in the area of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). He commented, “RIVM is an unusual organization. There are a lot of scientists who collaborate in international networks. They work primarily with highly demanding applications, for example, software that makes models or crunches calculations with large datasets. The applications often require a lot of calculating power and memory capacity from our systems.”

For the past few years, the IT department at QBE had been looking into desktop virtualization to determine if there was a solid use case for it in their desktop environment; however it wasn’t until they outsourced the majority of their application developers they realized adopting desktop virtualization was a necessity for their offshore development. To accommodate their needs, QBE deployed Citrix XenDesktop in early 2009. Initially when they were testing the virtual desktop deployment they used their standard desktop build and architecture including login scripts, preconfigured group policy object scenarios, and roaming profiles. However, the startup and logon times were very slow and would have been unacceptable, especially compared to their physical desktops.

Vos Logistics faced significant challenges with unresponsive applications and frozen sessions, which were causing downtime for employees. The main business application, Lovos, was not terminal server aware, leading to server loads of 100 percent. This resulted in non-responsive applications and frozen sessions, necessitating frequent reboots. The organization needed a solution to manage the runaway application and reduce the need for server reboots.

Investa Property Group faced significant challenges with their IT infrastructure, primarily due to the wide variation in user operating environments and the limited off-site access to applications. The organization had a high number of service tickets and long resolution times due to the discrepancies in PCs and software. Deploying software remotely was nearly impossible, and asset management was problematic with obsolete resources lying dormant. The CIO initiated a review of the organization’s desktops and found significant opportunities for a more efficient, Standard Operating Environment (SOE). The systemic challenges were most apparent for the IT team but also had implications for the end-users and the way they worked. The need for a streamlined IT infrastructure became evident, and the organization sought a solution that could address these issues comprehensively.

Banner Bank faced significant performance issues with its Citrix desktop environment, which supported 150 applications and 1000 employees. The resource-intensive applications caused performance degradation during activity spikes, affecting both employee productivity and customer service. The bank needed to increase capacity without investing in additional hardware and software licenses. On optimal days, they could only get six to nine people on a Citrix machine, and any spike in activity would cause system failures. The bank required more than 250 Citrix machines to keep up with the workload, leading to constant complaints about applications locking up or not responding.

CCI has approximately 260 employees working across the company’s offices in Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth. With many employees regularly working from home and travelling between CCI’s offices, the company’s IT department struggled to deliver a consistent desktop experience across the different locations and devices. The user base also experienced lengthy Windows logon times, with user profiles generally taking up to 15 minutes to load, which affected the productivity employees. Commenting on the problem, Trevor Walter, Team Leader of Technology Services at CCI, said: “The slow logon times, which could range anywhere from between 10 to 15 minutes and, on occasion, up to 45 minutes due to profiling issues with the previous solution, were a source of frustration for employees as well as a headache for our IT department. Simply put, every minute spent waiting by an employee to gain access to their computer was another minute lost in productivity. We were also struggling to deliver a consistent and personalized user experience for our staff, which we needed to change.” In addition, the organization was due to migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7 and wanted to minimize user disruption and the impact of a migration project on IT resources.

Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) faced rising costs and complexity in supporting an outdated IT environment. Users' personalization and policy settings were limited to a single, local machine, making it inconvenient for staff and students to travel between campuses and use different devices. Additionally, the university struggled with optimizing software licensing and managing applications that monopolized resources. KPU was committed to lowering desktop management and support costs while delivering a consistent end user experience with centralized user management. The organization spent three months reviewing solutions to assist with its virtualization initiative.

Peconic Bay Medical Center faced several challenges in managing their desktop infrastructure. They needed to support a joint solution with VMware and Imprivata, simplify all aspects of desktop management, ensure fast logons from any device or location, and manage a large environment with a small IT staff. Prior to the implementation, nurses and doctors accessed computers on rolling medication carts, which were expensive, often inadequately charged, and difficult to support and maintain. The center decided to deploy the Cerner Soarian Clinicals electronic health record (EHR) solution, which presented an opportunity to completely rebuild the network and desktop infrastructure.

St. Tammany Parish Hospital faced several challenges in its IT infrastructure, including the need to implement Meaningful Use standards set by the federal government, slow logon times, and a lack of user personalization. The hospital's help desk was overburdened with issues related to user profile settings, and there was a need to enable proximity printing for clinicians accessing multiple patient rooms and printers. Additionally, the hospital was migrating from Windows XP to a virtual Windows 7 environment, which added another layer of complexity to their IT challenges.