Liquidware Labs, the leader in desktop transformation solutions, today announced TERACAI Corporation, a New York-based accredited VMware® reseller, has deployed the Liquidware Labs Desktop Transformation Solutions for their own internal VDI project.
TERACAI, a solutions provider and Liquidware Labs’ channel partner, had already developed internal expertise in the Liquidware Labs Desktop Transformation Suite, for the numerous projects they had completed for their customers which includes a wide spectrum of organizations including academic institutions, healthcare providers and commercial companies.
Having the advantage of in-house expertise and numerous examples of the benefits of desktop virtualization at their customer sites, TERACAI senior management decided to transition their organization to a virtual desktop infrastructure.
“We had standardized on Windows® XP PCs, but we were very aware that change was imminent. We decided that migrating our servers and desktops to the VMware platform would ultimately create a more flexible, cost-effective and more manageable foundation to serve us for years to come,” said Zach Fortna, TERACAI’s manager of information technology.
TERACAI relies on Liquidware Labs Stratusphere™ UX to report on the progress of the project, as well as to perform “health checks” on the environment. The solution supports visibility, diagnosis and optimization of virtual desktops while also collecting data at the desktop, network, server, storage and hypervisor levels across multiple virtual and physical platforms. As the virtual desktop environment has grown at TERACI and as end-user desktop performance has improved, the company has also been able to redeploy half of its desktop help desk staff to other functions.
“Our virtual desktops run significantly faster than we expected, and leveraging a virtual desktop infrastructure allows us to replace older PCs with zero-client devices that significantly boost performance and ease desk-side support needs,” said Fortna. “Thanks to Stratusphere UX, we can also easily collect data to determine how to improve performance and as well as document improvements to verify ROI for senior executives and validate this investment.”
Desktop virtualization is now the centerpiece of the TERACAI master plan to create a highly-modern, efficient and cost-effective infrastructure. The IT group virtualizes a group of desktops each week and plans to eventually virtualize all 300 user desktops at the company’s offices.
“It has become so much easier to track down problems,” Fortna said. “With Stratusphere UX we can spot and solve a problem and deploy the fix to 200 users in one night, when before it would have been a multi-week process. As a result, we have not had any serious downtime—either with the system or any individual desktops.”
Because of the improved desktop performance, TERACAI has also delayed migrating users to Windows 7 to earn a greater return on its investment in the Windows XP operating system and applications. Virtualizing user desktops has also set the stage for an easier upgrade to Windows 7 when TERACAI determines the time is right. The company then plans to leverage Liquidware Labs ProfileUnity™ to migrate users to the new OS.
“With ProfileUnity, we anticipate that we be able to complete the upgrade over a weekend, which is unheard of in a physical environment,” Fortna said. “And when we convert our power users that run more applications and require more administrative permissions, we plan to leverage ProfileUnity FlexApp™, which will help us effectively provision applications for this specific user group.”
“TERACAI’s use of VDI in-house speaks highly of their expertise and confidence in leveraging this technology and makes them the ideal ‘trusted advisor’ that clients can fully rely upon for guidance in these initiatives,” said Chris Akerberg, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing for Liquidware Labs. “It is a reflection of both the quality of our solutions and the caliber of our channel partners, such as TERACAI, who are leading the desktop transformation efforts of today’s forward-looking organizations.”