White Paper Virtual Client Services

Virtual Client Services from Fujitsu allows you to securely access your desktop applications on any device, anywhere and at any time – for greater business agility and working flexibility.

White Paper Fujitsu Virtual Client Services

Introduction 1Your next step is an important one 3Could your next major desktop refresh be your last? 4Make your business more agile 5Are you ready for a brave new world? 6The benefits of working with Fujitsu 7

Contents

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IntroductionThe concept of business agility should be at the very heart of how a 21st century organization operates. Being an agile enterprise is about reacting rapidly and cost-efficiently to changes in the business environment. It’s about responding more quickly to customer demands, adjusting to shifts in global markets, and leveraging diminishing human resources in more creative and collaborative ways. But there are other considerations to bear in mind too, like enhancing the security of an organization and protecting its data and intellectual property.

Workforces are becoming more flexible The biggest cost in the vast majority of businesses is the payroll. Economic uncertainty has forced organizations to reassess the way they recruit, retain and divest talent. Though businesses may be looking to cut the number of permanent staff on the payroll, many of them still need to increase headcount on a seasonal basis. There is also a growing trend for organizations to ramp-up numbers temporarily with specialist project staff – either to take advantage of new market opportunities as they arise, or to support specific campaigns, events or product launches. Enterprises are increasingly considering “crowd-sourcing” and partnerships with other organizations as mechanisms to meet demand for skills and capability while avoiding establishing a larger, permanent workforce.

Flexible working is also on the increase – and this doesn’t just mean working flexible hours. It also means part-time working, job sharing and working from home. People are blurring the boundaries of the working day as they juggle their home, work and social lives – and they want the ability to access their data anywhere and at any time.

The challenges this causes for managers delivering end-user services are clear. They have to cope with a constantly shifting user base, semi-permanent staff that may sit in or outside of the corporate firewall, and a vast array of different user needs and profiles. In all cases the organization needs to provide workers with access to appropriate systems and tools – in a secure and flexible manner.

Flexible working needs a more open attitude to devices and applications Individuals are becoming much more technology savvy as they grow accustomed to having increasingly powerful technology at home – and they’re demanding a similar experience in the work environment. ‘Generation Y’ (those people born between 1980 and 1994) is entering the workforce in larger volumes than the previous generation – with a much better understanding of IT, and greater expectations. There are many more end-user devices beyond the traditional PC that IT departments need to support – including smartphones and tablets. Users demand collaboration tools that reflect social media systems, and even non-permanent staff often want to use their own technology.

If businesses want to be truly agile, they need to attract the best talent – but the best resources, whether individuals or third party organizations, are unlikely to want to change their IT for small project involvements. They expect to use their own tools and techniques – and managers of end-user services have little choice but to enable them to do so. This makes the implementation of desktop environments more complex for IT departments, and increases the risk of security issues.

In other words, managers of end-user services need to think seriously about how to better support mobile, remote and flexible working – regardless of the device or applications the user wants to work with. They must also recognize that not all users will be directly employed by the organization.

Property estates must be rationalized as the workforce evolvesAs the make-up of the workforce changes, it’s only natural that the office environment that houses it will too. Indeed, many organizations are moving away from the old style of corporate structure and working practices which invariably means a movement away from fixed IT workplaces. Instead, there’s an increasing demand for better hot-desking support and the need to cater for more flexible and temporary workers. In addition, facilities, design and location are being configured so that colleagues can collaborate in smaller groups.

Organizations are looking to reduce spending on maintaining physical offices, resulting in sites being sold and workforces consolidated into smaller spaces. Desktop managers in all sectors are going to have to deal with an increase in desk/user density in order to cope with smaller facilities. In the future, it is very likely that organizations will operate with more than one individual per desk.

White Paper Fujitsu Virtual Client Services

Embracing business agility is no longer an option – it’s essential

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Acquisitions and divestments must be handled quickly and painlessly Often change is necessitated by acquisitions or mergers with other businesses, either for financial reasons or for the purposes of gaining an opportunistic advantage. Other organizations choose to sell assets as they realign their strategies, or are forced to by regulators. For an agile business, it is vital that such activities happen as seamlessly as possible, and don’t create a drag factor on the overall performance of the business.

For the end-user services manager, the targets in this kind of situation are clear. In a merger or acquisition situation they need to ‘on-board’ new staff and systems as quickly as possible, while enabling fast and easy access for both sets of users to joint systems. And when it comes to divestments, they need to separate systems and data in a controlled and secure manner, while minimizing the residual costs associated with assets that are no longer needed.

Control of the IT estate needs to be returned to the organizationOrganizations want to have greater control over their IT systems, with data protection and information access considered an imperative – but this level of control should not interfere with the existing demands made of employees.

The virtualization of technology gives CIOs the power to make this happen, providing the opportunity to implement and deliver IT management best practice across the organization. This can then lead the way for a more secure operation, improved user productivity, higher service availability, a better user experience and the general mitigation of risks associated with running a complex IT estate. What’s more, thanks to virtualization this can be achieved without compromising the end user’s ability to manage their day-to- day business responsibilities efficiently and effectively.

White Paper Fujitsu Virtual Client Services

People are blurring the boundaries of the working day as they juggle their home, work and social lives

– How they used to work – How they work now

7am 9am 11am 1pm 3pm 5pm 7pm 9pm 11pm

Check e-mail(Smartphone)

Work life

Work/Personal lifeDrive, listen

to e-mail from IVI

Work in conference room

IM with wife

Work at desk

IM with kid’s teacher

E-mail via TV

Drive kids to soccer

Check e-mailone last time

Family time

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There’s no doubt about it, your next technology refresh is going to cost you. But what if that money could be used to:

Fund a transformation in the way you manage your desktops?

Help you to manage an ever-increasing set of demands?

Deliver true workforce agility?

Generate sustainable return on investment?

In the recent past, IT departments looked to manage these issues by reducing complexity through the standardization of hardware and software. This helped to reduce the costs of managing physical PCs, while also cutting labor costs when deploying new operating systems and applications.

Unfortunately the old “one-size-fits-all” approach does not meet the long-term needs of users, nor does it provide the flexibility organizations need going forward. IT departments can no

The customerThe Schiphol Group is an airport operator and developer of ‘Airport Cities’ – dynamic, metropolitan areas with the facilities of a modern city to ensure travellers and airlines have the best airport experience. In The Netherlands, the Group operates four airports: Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Rotterdam The Hague Airport, Lelystad Airport and Eindhoven Airport.

longer concentrate solely on standardizing their hardware, software and applications – but they must also think about standardizing the services they use to manage their infrastructure and applications.

Deploying standard toolsets, policies, processes and procedures to support new ways of working is vital if you want to provide a managed infrastructure service that enables workforce collaboration, from anywhere at any time. Providing it is effectively and efficiently managed, virtualizing a workplace can deliver higher levels of service availability, increase diversity in working practice across the organization and provide the business with the security and cost controls that it needs.

Planning to implement business changes like these is complex, so selecting the correct partner to work with is of critical importance.

White Paper Fujitsu Virtual Client Services

Your next step is an important one...

The challengeAfter analyzing both its employment and IT environment, Schiphol Group identified the need for a completely new IT infrastructure to enable more flexible working.

The solutionSchiphol Group asked Fujitsu to manage the entire back office and IT Service Desk, 24/7, as well as the virtualization of all workstations.

The benefit Flexible, mobile working reduced office space and its associated costs

Greener and more efficient working practices

Increased employee satisfaction and more attractive employment conditions

Improved communication between colleagues due to flexible working

A more positive and modern employer image

Schiphol Group

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The idea isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. Organizations today are rapidly moving towards ‘as a service’ type models for more and more aspects of their infrastructure. These models are attractive because they need no upfront capital expenditure, offering pay-as-you-go structures instead – delivered via secure and reliable cloud-based services. This means that technology refreshes are no longer about replacing old kit with faster and slicker machines – but about creating agile, on-demand platforms that ensure your business is always prepared for change.

The choice is yoursMany organizations either consider the traditional upgrade path to physical desktops or adopting desktop virtualization. The latter presents an opportunity to develop their systems in a completely different way, which provides more flexibility for end users and the readiness to make more use of cloud computing if and when it is required.

IT departments need to make choices about how they tackle technology refresh issues, considering their potential return on investment in the face of a flexible, more fluid future.

At Fujitsu, we believe organizations can follow one of three paths:

Take the traditional hardware route They can refresh their hardware technology, upgrading all the machines in a like -for-like swap with a new operating system – and hope to make productivity improvements from faster, more efficient machines and an improved OS. Organizations choosing this option can then reassess how they improve the management of their desktop environment, considering centralization and remote access tools to reduce costs, improving power management, and speeding up deployments of new machines and applications. However, this approach will not fundamentally change the way IT provision is delivered.

Embrace the future of desktop virtualization They can move towards a brave new world of desktop ‘as a service’. Organizations can use virtualization technology to separate the operating system, data and applications from the physical device and take advantage of cloud-based provision on a cost-per-seat model. This approach fundamentally underpins the concept of ‘any time, anywhere, any place’ and enables them to support any device – even users’ personal ones.

Gradually begin the upgrade process They can move to something in-between. This is a more suitable approach for organizations that are not yet ready for a fully virtualized approach or ‘as a service’ model, but acknowledge the need to start moving in this direction and have a mature enough infrastructure and management policy to start the journey. This may include taking existing PCs and locking them down as ‘kiosk’ type devices, or delivering virtualized applications that are decoupled from local hardware and delivered from the centralized servers, but with the operating system still residing on the local hardware.

Whichever path an organization chooses, it is vital that they also choose the right partner to help them make their next technology refresh a success, and potentially, to make it their last.

White Paper Fujitsu Virtual Client Services

Could your next major desktop refresh be your last?

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Imagine the scenario: your CEO wants to dramatically cut property overheads through a reorganization effort, but is held back by the fact that staff are tied to individual PCs on fixed desks. An acquisition is on the horizon, but concern is growing over the 18 months estimated for the merged organizations to start using each other’s systems – much of it due to end-user service integration issues.

With such a diverse set of challenges to face, organizations need to fully evaluate ‘virtual’ and cloud-based ‘as a service’ approaches to end-user services if they are to adapt. Thanks to this new vision of the desktop, technology refreshes can be dramatically simplified. Problematic legacy applications can be hosted remotely in isolated environments, but can still be used within modern operating systems and application suites.

Importantly, both these models also have multiple benefits that clearly meet the wider business needs and address issues facing today’s organization.

Desktop Virtualization helps IT departments to cope with new flexible working models. Benefits are wide-ranging, from enabling users to share terminals and desks to facilitating remote access to applications and data from anywhere using a range of different devices – including employee-owned. Provisioning of temporary contract staff also becomes much simpler – because new desktops can be ‘spun up’ in seconds, rather than the days (or sometimes even weeks) experienced under traditional models. This approach can also offer several ways to reduce costs, in particular through application virtualization. Desktop Virtualization has the capacity to improve security and compliance by enforcing the use of centralized data stores for managing business data – reducing the risk of losing data stored on thick clients and making it much easier to manage mergers or divestments. Development and testing platforms can be created quickly thanks to rapid provisioning, speeding up company R&D activities and accelerating time-to-market.

Cloud-based ‘as a Service’ provision enables organizations to avoid capital investment (CAPEX) and achieve an even lower cost of ownership for end-user services and application delivery. At the same time, cloud promotes improved performance and support for flexible and mobile working – even in critical business environments. This is made possible by the ‘as a service’ model as it cleverly utilizes virtualization technology to separate out the operating system, data and applications from the physical device – and then employs cloud-based provision to charge on a cost-per-seat model. There are several ways you can exploit cloud – either via a private cloud (on-premises or off-premises) serving just your organization, a community cloud shared among like-minded organizations, a public cloud service, or a hybrid based on a combination of these different approaches. The benefit for CFOs is that fixed costs are transformed into much more malleable costs that closely track business demand. And CIOs welcome the peace of mind that comes from using proven IT infrastructure pools, designed and installed in secure data centers, which also offers the resilience and performance levels that their systems need.

These models give organizations the power to deliver desktop services at a reduced cost with increased flexibility – and without ever needing to think about the time or complications involved in managing major OS or hardware upgrades themselves. They’re able to move costs away from upfront capital expenditure, pay only for what they use, and can give their users access to the very latest software to enhance the way they work.

While these benefits are obviously compelling and instantly attractive to most businesses, it’s important to remember that each organization is different. It is vital to ascertain which users will benefit from which type of service, carefully considering the needs of your business and your end users to help you find the right blend of services.

White Paper Fujitsu Virtual Client Services

Make your business more agile

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While server and storage virtualization have been widely adopted and successful, the virtualized desktop has yet to be embraced to the same extent. At Fujitsu, we believe this could be about to change. By improving flexibility, offering better security and reducing costs, the solutions presented by desktop virtualization are a perfect match for the business challenges of today.

Slowly, organizations are starting to embrace this new world – but the upward curve will only continue if the cost and performance benefits are made absolutely clear. More importantly, businesses need to be provided with a realistic plan for choosing the solution that is right for them – while mitigating the full range of risks involved.

The Fujitsu approachAt Fujitsu, understanding the adoption issues around desktop virtualization is as important to us as understanding the end-to-end requirements for traditional ‘classic’ end-user services. We can see the great potential in the new world of ‘as a service’ models, and acknowledge that they can, and will, truly transform the way that organizations think about desktop services in the future.

However, we understand that though many organizations have evaluated desktop virtualization, they may have found it only applicable to a small proportion of their end users. Our solution has been proven to deliver a much wider and faster adoption – an approach that is able to transform the whole estate in a way that is scalable and really drives business value.

The key is to recognize that ‘one size does not fit all’ and that exploiting any combination of these approaches should be considered as part of a broader solution to delivering a cost-effective, higher quality and more agile service. A balance must be struck between the business demands for control and users’ demands for flexibility. That’s why our approach, based on our extensive experience in delivering tailored desktop services, meets both the needs of individual organizations, and their people.

Assessment – our process begins with a thorough assessment of your organization’s technology, applications and user environments. We also use a comprehensive ROI model, which has been developed through real experiences in client engagements – to identify both long-term and ‘quick win’ cost savings.

Profiling – the assessment data we capture is then used to create a set of user roles mapped across the organization, where application types as well as data and service access needs are documented. The result is a set of build models which are used to create common, standardized technology roles that reduce operational cost and provide commonality across many users.

User engagement – we recognize the human side of any implementation, and use the profile data to provide a positive user experience through relevant user training and support.

Planning – We then create comprehensive, informed delivery plans that enable us to realize cost savings in a short time frame – and at minimal risk to your organization.

White Paper Fujitsu Virtual Client Services

Are you ready for a brave new world?

Fujitsu is responsible for managing approximately 5 million desktop devices globally, including 2.9m across Europe – and is the number one desktop service supplier to the UK Government.

We are also a leading global systems integrator for desktop virtualization projects, delivering some of the largest and most complex desktop transformations.

All of these projects are driven by a clear business case for delivering business agility, supported by the requirement to reduce the costs of managing the end-user environment. Overall, our services save a typical customer up to 30% of their service costs. With the latest cloud-based innovations ‘as a service’, we now expect organizations to save up to 40%.

Customers can also rest assured that the Fujitsu portfolio is capable of handling any kind of end-user service and includes every aspect of the desktop lifecycle – from procuring and managing thick and thin clients, delivering hosted applications and virtual desktops, providing managed print services, desk-side support and Service Desk services, to the responsible disposal or redeployment of technology at end-of-life.

Fujitsu and the desktop

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While server and storage virtualization have been widely adopted and successful, the virtualized desktop has yet to be embraced to the same extent. At Fujitsu, we believe this could be about to change. By improving flexibility, offering better security and reducing costs, the solutions presented by desktop virtualization are a perfect match for the business challenges of today.

At Fujitsu, we know from experience that the capacity for a virtual desktop environment can vary significantly between organizations. However, we strongly believe that for most businesses the desktop is the next big opportunity to reduce operating costs and deliver real business flexibility at the same time.

And this is no theory. Because, step-by-step, these are the benefits that our existing customers are already realizing.

Simplified technology refresh – one of the issues many organizations currently face is how to update aging Microsoft Windows and Office environments for their client base, and how to achieve this cost-effectively. In the virtual desktop world, problematic legacy applications are hosted remotely in isolated environments, yet still used within modern operating systems and application suites. The result? A significant easing of the transition to new technologies.

Operational cost reductions – delivered through highly standardized and automated desktop environments, underpinned by proven mananaged infrastructure practices and controls. This enables substantial lifetime savings for organizations in many ways, for example through reduced asset costs, extended asset refresh timescales and the benefits realized through application virtualization.

Readily available and affordable hosted virtual client services – through a dedicated service, or via resources shared with other like-minded organizations, or on a multi-tenanted platform, with options for on-premise or off-premise provision. All of these options enable organizations to exploit desktop virtualization for a comparatively low fee, without having to make significant investment in new back-end infrastructure. They’re also able to choose the levels of secure separation appropriate to their business demands.

Data protection – taking the security of the desktop to a new level, hosted environments enforce the use of centralized data stores for managing business data – reducing the risk of losing data stored on thick clients.

Flexible provisioning – in the virtual world, new desktops can be ‘spun-up’ and made available to users within seconds, rather than the days (or sometimes even weeks) experienced under traditional provisioning models, helping business to cope with fluctuating staffing requirements.

Flexible working – mobile working programs are increasing in popularity because they help organizations to rationalize their property estate and cut costs, while at the same time improving productivity and staff retention rates.

A better user experience – one of the key benefits delivered by desktop virtualization is the ability to create a truly personalized, location-aware, roaming profile for a user across a variety of client devices that the user may be allowed to use, such as their home PC, their smartphone or an internet cafe. The result is that the user can move securely across any device, in any location – always seeing the same environment and being presented with access to their application portfolio, in a way that’s appropriate to where they are working.

White Paper Fujitsu Virtual Client Services

The benefits of working with Fujitsu...

© 2014 Fujitsu Technology Solutions GmbH Fujitsu, the Fujitsu logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Fujitsu Limited in Japan and other countries. Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Technical data subject to modification and delivery subject to availability. Any liability that the data and illustrations are complete, actual or correct is excluded. Designations may be trademarks and/or copyrights of the respective manufacturer, the use of which by third parties for their own purposes may infringe the rights of such owner.

Contact FUJITSU Fujitsu Technology Solutions GmbH Mies-van-der-Rohe-Straße 8 80807 München, Germany www.fujitsu.com www.fujitsu.com/contact 2015-01-20 INT EN