Making IT Flexxible

I recently jumped aboard a fantastic company that intends to enable remote work for many years to come! A lot of folks have asked me why I joined Flexxible IT as their WW Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)? Aside from the great people, the incredible culture, and the challenge, let me highlight what excites me about Flexxible IT!

In 2008, Sebastian Prat founded Flexxible IT with a simple vision – to provide the best digital workspace experience for the enterprise. Desktop as a Service or DaaS was not on the radar of many; VMware and Citrix have just started the journey toward what we now know as virtual desktop infrastructure or VDI. DaaS was not even an acronym yet and would not be until Desktone (acquired by VMware) made the push early on. Years would pass, and the question remained, did VDI or DaaS ever catch on?

Then 2020 hit! Companies who said they would never embrace remote work were forced to not only support it but implement remote work capabilities on the fly. Companies who were half in and half out with remote workers were forced to go 100 percent all in.?We went from a society where remote work was a perk to now it is expected. Remote work is here to stay, and the question enterprises need to ask is, are they truly ready?

2022 will be the year when most enterprises will need to figure out how to start or finish their digital transformations. Let’s explore some enablers to making this happen.

Edge Computing

A good friend of mine says that if you travel for Christmas break to family and have kids, you cannot forget the most important thing, the presents! They need to be as close to the kids as possible. The same sometimes goes for computing resources. In VDI, the workloads need to be closer to the storage for a better user experience. In big data, sometimes the compute needs to be closer to the data and be low-latency.?The simple fact is that the cloud will not work for everyone or every scenario. Edge Computing helps solve and opens up many solutions.

HCI 2.0

Another friend opened my eyes to the notion that HCI with the cloud is very possible! HCI 2.0 is the new architecture for VDI infrastructure and DaaS initiatives. Let’s call this what it really is – HCI plus Cloud. Sound familiar? Cloud workloads are relevant in some cases, while a local workload would work better in others. The question is, how do you manage both? Open the door and enter HCI 2.0 – Management for edge and cloud workloads. I am dumbing this down a lot, but I will unfold this in future blogs.

Hybrid Cloud

2020 fast-tracked hybrid cloud in a significant way, but I would say many enterprises are not fully “hybrid” yet. I would venture to guess the journey to a full hybrid will take another 2-3 years at best. Having some resources in a public cloud and some on-premises does not mean you are a hybrid cloud. Management, analytics, security, and automation will be critical to making the hybrid cloud story complete.

Applications

Applications to some end-users are their lifeline, meaning they cannot get their job done if they don’t have said application. The big question is, will this application work in the cloud, on the edge, or both? Does this application require data access, file storage, and security? How will the enterprise reliably move these applications into a cloud scenario and know the digital wellbeing of the end-user is positive? I will leave this one as a cliffhanger; you will just have to tune back for more.

Automation

Automation is awesome! Automation can work in the enterprise, whether to deploy infrastructure on the fly or perform automated actions based on data or automate daunting helpdesk tasks. Automation is the future and will allow the enterprise to focus on streamlining access to the business.

So why did I join? It is simple – Flexxible IT will solve the above and more. What, you want more??You will just have to follow us to find out what is to come and watch the future unfold! Remember, the cloud has no boundaries and our end-users matter.?