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This is not completely true - I’ve implemented and maintained remote setups that have worked brilliant. It’s about using it as a tool where that tool fits. One

This is not completely true - I’ve implemented and maintained remote setups that have worked brilliant. It’s about using it as a tool where that tool fits. One successful example is a support call-center with 2000 users. The specific role used about 30 apps and they were all packaged and maintained by my team. Using a ci/cd fashion to build os image and apps we could roll out updates to base image and sandboxed applications completely seamless to these users. (Side note: We built an automation that synced the two latest versions of all applications to a locally attached SSD drive on all hosts - app startup was near instant for all users which was fantastic at this point in time) Running the clients inside the datacenter brought the latency to a minimum which greatly improved the performance of specific business critical apps. Managing all parts pertaining to logon properly had the users ready to take calls in 10-15 seconds - a great improvement compared to the previous distributed client/server setup. - Reducing latency between application and backend was a major win. Greatly appreciated by users as we saw massive reduction in latency for specific operations (crappy apps). - Being able to integrate with the ip-telephony call-center software required a windows workstation environment hence the choice of “VDI” - No noticeable os and app updates EVER was greatly appreciated by the users. Even when moving from XP to 7 at one point. - Our ability to roll out massive OS and app updates at will to pilot groups who can roll back with a logoff/login was greatly appreciated by the team Granted, this was 10 years ago and my opinion was always that these business applications should be rewritten - BUT I have yet to see a better managed and performing windows client & app delivery. Citix provisioning services (PVS) coupled with app-v/app streaming was an incredibly progressive way of delivering windows workspaces. During my time at citrix I often raised the fact that PVS for linux coupled with docker was an amazing setup - never got any traction on this though… everyone was way too focused on windows delivery.

hughrr 5y ago
Did anyone sit with the users for a few days? I hear the same success stories from the MSPs while simultaneously their users are crying into their coffee on a daily basis. In fact “sorry our systems are slow today” is a normal catchphrase these days. Only high performance call centre outcome I’ve seen in recent years is run by Indian scammers.
- jordanbeiber 5y ago
  The users were working claims in the insurance industry. They used a lot of really specific, custom built software that all were integrated with each other as well as to ip-telephony system, mainframes and office suites (MS and Domino). These integrations was built at HQ, ”works on my laptop style”, but at a branch office 1000km away… no fun at all! An unholy mess that would take many years and a couple of $100.000.000 to untangle. I had weekly “continual improvement meetings” with the power/super users, one or two from each branch office. The whole team spent a lot of time at the local branch offices dog fooding the service and talking to the users. I used the service as my only workplace for three years in a development & ops role. The success factor here was that we built a solution for a specific set of users that we continuously improved. I’m talking “make something slightly better today than it was yesterday - every day” type of mindset. We started out with a PoC by brokering sessions to physical machines located in the datacenters. First users was the assigned "super-users". They were assigned due to being the most demanding and loud user base. After a few week they _demanded_ that every user should get the same setup - we interpreted this as a successful PoC and went on to explore options. At this time neither Citrix or vmware had a concept called VDI and we started out using pre-release code from vmware. First prod version was using vmware but we only gained performance, which ofc was a win, but we still needed to manage all the vm's through standard automations (os patches, asset and inventory, application repackaging and roll-outs) When Citrix bought ardence to get PvS it was a no-brainer - ICA protocol, PvS and app-v streaming was a great combo to rapidly deliver a high performing workplace. BUT - you need automations and reliable network links, both of which we could provide. We had dedicated hypervisor hosts with the fastest local storage available. You should NEVER user SAN/NAS or other centralized storage systems for these workloads IMO. Also, monitor the performance closely! Caching all application to host local SSD really took care of a lot of the potential perf issues we saw early on. Depending on user role they could get dedicated hardware as well, but this was only for a select few users. It was set up as a specific service delivery and my team was dedicated to improving and supporting the users. One of the most rewarding projects I've been involved in, mainly due to the really close collaboration with end-users.
  - jordanbeiber 5y ago

hughrr 5y ago

Did anyone sit with the users for a few days? I hear the same success stories from the MSPs while simultaneously their users are crying into their coffee on a daily basis. In fact “sorry our systems are slow today” is a normal catchphrase these days. Only high performance call centre outcome I’ve seen in recent years is run by Indian scammers.

jordanbeiber 5y ago
The users were working claims in the insurance industry. They used a lot of really specific, custom built software that all were integrated with each other as well as to ip-telephony system, mainframes and office suites (MS and Domino). These integrations was built at HQ, ”works on my laptop style”, but at a branch office 1000km away… no fun at all! An unholy mess that would take many years and a couple of $100.000.000 to untangle. I had weekly “continual improvement meetings” with the power/super users, one or two from each branch office. The whole team spent a lot of time at the local branch offices dog fooding the service and talking to the users. I used the service as my only workplace for three years in a development & ops role. The success factor here was that we built a solution for a specific set of users that we continuously improved. I’m talking “make something slightly better today than it was yesterday - every day” type of mindset. We started out with a PoC by brokering sessions to physical machines located in the datacenters. First users was the assigned "super-users". They were assigned due to being the most demanding and loud user base. After a few week they _demanded_ that every user should get the same setup - we interpreted this as a successful PoC and went on to explore options. At this time neither Citrix or vmware had a concept called VDI and we started out using pre-release code from vmware. First prod version was using vmware but we only gained performance, which ofc was a win, but we still needed to manage all the vm's through standard automations (os patches, asset and inventory, application repackaging and roll-outs) When Citrix bought ardence to get PvS it was a no-brainer - ICA protocol, PvS and app-v streaming was a great combo to rapidly deliver a high performing workplace. BUT - you need automations and reliable network links, both of which we could provide. We had dedicated hypervisor hosts with the fastest local storage available. You should NEVER user SAN/NAS or other centralized storage systems for these workloads IMO. Also, monitor the performance closely! Caching all application to host local SSD really took care of a lot of the potential perf issues we saw early on. Depending on user role they could get dedicated hardware as well, but this was only for a select few users. It was set up as a specific service delivery and my team was dedicated to improving and supporting the users. One of the most rewarding projects I've been involved in, mainly due to the really close collaboration with end-users.
- jordanbeiber 5y ago