We find that our customers are looking towards a virtual desktop solution for the following reasons:

Bring Your Own Devices: as the consumer device landscape expands and becomes diverse employees expect that they can use a variety of different devices to conduct their work.

Contract Work: as the supply chain grows around the world, businesses are increasingly looking at flexible ways of working, including use of contract workers which flex up/down to meet changing business demands.

Mobile: working arrangements have become a lot more flexible, home working is a common theme, employees want greater flexibility and employers expect their workforce to be able to access services and be productive wherever they are.

Security: as systems are becoming increasingly more internet facing, the surface attack area has increased and regulatory requirements have grown. The WannaCry ransomware attack alone cost businesses $4 billion. There is a clear need to protect corporate assets and data without reducing business agility.

Our more recent rollouts have been based across the following areas:

Education where access to desktop services need to be provided as seasonal demand dictates.

NHS & Healthcare where remote workers need access to secure services in a remote working context.

Finance where a standardized build can be used to rapidly roll out shared services to newly acquired businesses which need to meet regulatory compliance obligations.

Key Benefits

Multi Devices

Amazon WorkSpaces is simple to access and is available on a wide range of devices (including PC, tablets, thin clients and selective smartphones) which can be accessed from anywhere or locked down to specific network addresses as your requirements dictate.

Simple

Amazon WorkSpaces is simple to manage, with no infrastructure or servers to worry about. The tool provides the capability to control when patches are applied (including the ability to automatically deploy during pre-defined maintenance windows). WorkSpaces can also work with your existing security infrastructure (e.g. Active Directory, RADIUS servers, certificate authority services and anti-virus solutions).

Secure

Amazon WorkSpaces provides secure access to business applications, documents and internal systems from remote devices using a hardened desktop image. With this solution, data is not sent or stored on end-user devices, the data remains in the cloud or in your on-premise environment.  Support for MFA is also provided (via the use of a RADIUS server). Amazon WorkSpaces allows customers to have tight security policies and a strong security posture without compromising flexibility.

Cost Effective

Amazon WorkSpaces lets you scale in line with your own growth plans, with flexible payment term options to maximize the return on your investment. Monthly and hourly billing options can be mixed to provide for the most cost-effective solution. A default set of applications are also provided at no extra cost (including IE 11, Firefox and 7-Zip). Different bundle options are also provided to best meet the specific business use case.

Conclusion

The use of Amazon WorkSpaces improves enterprise security by keeping data within corporate boundaries providing users with the ability to access data from disparate locations. This virtual desktop solution is secure, simple to administer, cost effective and provides you with greater flexibility to meet changing ways of working and the ability to easily meet increases in staffing numbers.