Virtual Desktop (VDI)
The implementation or expansion of Virtual Desktops can be complex with potential for major user experience impact – both positive and negative.
A Spadafy VDI User Experience Assessment is an industry leading approach to optimize and diagnose virtual desktop environments. We focus not only on infrastructure and delivery model, but most importantly the actual experience of your users.
We utilize our best of breed analytics tools, department walk-throughs, user interviews, and thorough bench marking to identify areas where your organization is excelling at delivering optimal user experience, and areas for improved user experience. Our team has been helping deliver highly optimized user focused VDI solutions since the infancy of VDI and SBC and will provide actionable insights to help improve your desktop delivery.
Spadafy VDI Solutions
USER EXPERIENCE KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS (KPIs)
The following metrics are based on benchmarks we’ve achieved in highly optimized virtual desktop and server based computing environments. If you’re seeing numbers outside of the range below our VDI UX Assessment can help with recommendations for optimization / configuration, alternative software solutions or our own toolkits to improve your user experience.
Overall User Experience Score
Overall User Experience Score is a consolidated metric based on the percentage of active computing time that users experience no resource constraint. Primary measurement includes CPU, RAM, Disk, Network / Latency, Application faults or other outages / limits. We typically benchmark this during the beginning of our engagement, then closely monitor as modifications / changes are made to help trend the overall improvement. This can also be performed as a comparison to your physical desktop environment to help gauge the effectiveness of your VDI deployment.
Initial Logon w/ Badge Tap
In a non persistent VDI environment, initial logon is typically the first time a user connects for the day. Our measurement includes an average of analytics benchmarks as well as hands on testing. For customers leveraging alternative authentication modalities like Imprivata or Healthcast we include the time their software takes to launch.
Reconnect w/ Imprivata Badge Tap
Reconnect time is measured both on roaming and when returning to the same machine. In enterprises with alternative authentication modalities like Healthcast or Imprivata we measure this as the time to fully reconnect to a disconnected session, rather than unlocking an endpoint and returning to an existing session, where the reconnect should be instant.
App Launch – Locally Installed
For application launch times we use an average of analytics data + hands on bench marking. This measurement is the time for an application installed on the VDI/SBC image to launch to logon screen or working state from double click.
App Launch – Citrix XenApp / Horizon RDS / RemoteApp
For application launch times we use an average of analytics data + hands on bench marking. This measurement is the time for an application delivered via Citrix XenApp, VMware RDS, or Microsoft Remote App to launch to logon screen or working state from double click.
This is an example of some of the benchmarks we capture during a User Experience Assessment. For more details and to view an example report, contact us at info@spadafy.com.
What’s included in a Spadafy VDI UX Report?
KPI Assessment
Review and recommendations based on benchmarks measured in your organization’s environment. We’ll identify the timing of each component in your hardware and software stack, and provide guidance to achieve matching or better scores than the best VDI deployments out there. We can be available to assist with remediation / optimization efforts or your admin team can utilize our recommendations as guidance for future strategy.
User Experience Recommendations
Actionable insights on your users’ workflow and issues. When working with customers these have varied from a specific application that requires 10-12 clicks to be productive to extended application launch times, or lack of personalization / location awareness. We’ll identify end user pain points and provide solutions to help overcome these challenges.
Component Impact Report
Detailed analysis of each component in your VDI environment, from hardware / server infrastructure and network performance to thin clients and desktop delivery software. We use a simple rating system that identifies if a component or software solution in your stack is having a positive or negative impact on your user’s productivity, along with recommendations to enhance workflow.
Strategy and Planning Guidance
Many organizations leveraging VDI have plans to expand that have been put on hold either by budget constraints or by user experience issues. We’ll help provide guidance on budgetary options, and best practices for expansion. We’re 100% vendor agnostic and engineering focused, so our recommendations are always geared towards providing the highest possible user experience at the lowest cost.
We’re Cloud Friendly
Our VDI UX assessment can be focused on your on-prem deployment, cloud hosted VDI, or hybrid. If you’re considering migrating to cloud hosting we can also help identify areas to focus on to optimize your user experience. Being vendor agnostic also means cloud agnostic, we’ll give you real world recommendations. In some cases cloud is a great fit, in other cases it may not be.
