SYN 118 Desktop as a Service Perils and

SYN 118 - Desktop as a Service Perils and Payoffs of an Outsourced Daa. S Initiative May 8 th 4: 00 PM Ballroom E Paul Stansel Senior Engineering Advisor Aetna

Before We Get Started… Tweet about this session with hashtag #SYN 118 and #Citrix. Synergy

Introduction In 2012, Aetna began a major initiative to look at Desktop as a Service (Daa. S) with a goal of a platform that was: • Resilient • Easily expandable • Cost effective Today, we will discuss the growing pains involved in Daa. S both from our experience and the industry as a whole.

Who Am I? §Architect and implementer of Aetna’s 40, 000 seat internal Xen. App/Xen. Desktop platform §Lead SME for Aetna’s 15, 000 seat Daa. S design § 17 years working with Citrix products §Author and editor §Owner of Citrix. Tips. com

Your Takeaways Today What is Daa. S? Why did Aetna want to implement a Daa. S program? What are some options for hosted Daa. S? 5 keys we found to picking your Daa. S provider Why we kept our Daa. S in house and on site!

esktop ass a Service? What is Desktop

This is Your VDI…

This is Your VDI on Daa. S! Any Questions?

What is Daa. S? At the most fundamental level Daa. S is a Windows desktop you pay someone else to provide. Daa. S is just a business decision. “IDC expects the desktop-asa-service market to grow to a healthy $661 million by 2016…” - Brett Waldman, IDC Analyst

What Daa. S Isn’t Daa. S is not Infrastructure as a Service (Iaa. S) unless you pay for it to be Daa. S is not a security tool Daa. S is not always easier than doing it yourself Daa. S is not necessarily cheaper… it is however a different kind of cost

Flavors of Daa. S When you talk to a Daa. S provider these are the 3 “flavors” they are going to try and sell you:

Daa. S’d if You do Daa. S’d if You Don’t SPLA – Service Provider License Agreement only covers Server OS!

So How do I get VDI? The only licensed option to do a VDI setup in a Daa. S implementation is to BYOL (Bring Your Own License). Microsoft requires you to maintain hardware separation if you want to BYOL. That means separating storage, servers, etc;

So What About Licensing BYOD? You need a VDA license. The only devices exempt from the VDA license requirement are corporate owned and managed Windows devices. Everything else needs one.

To Summarize Licensing Microsoft doesn’t allow SPLAs to provide Desktop OSes SPLA for Office only applies on Server OSes BYOL requires you to use your own license infrastructure and maintain complete hardware isolation Only corporate owned Desktops have the requisite VDA license as part of SLA Everything else is going to cost you PER DEVICE Contact your Microsoft rep for additional licensing information

Aetna’s Path to Daa. S As a project team beginning in 2012 we were tasked to find a Daa. S solution that met the following goals: Reduce costs Speed to deployment Disaster Recovery Burst growth support Seamless integration

So Is Daa. S Cheaper? IT DEPENDS

Speed to Deployment Can purchase based on capacity requirements at a given point in time Don’t have to buy in bulk for capacity requirements 6 months out just to get a better price New technologies can be rapidly deployed on the Daa. S infrastructure without impact to the production environment

Daa. S as a Disaster Recovery Tool Lack an existing DR for your VDI? Daa. S might fit the bill! Fixed monthly costs Economies of scale On or off site DR Know your users!

Seasonal or Burst Growth Year round infrastructure is a waste of resources Burst or seasonal growth Overflow of internal infrastructure M&A Support Limited time frame projects

Seamless Integration Worked within Aetna’s existing processes and procedures Could be presented at the user level seamlessly Did not require a radical architecture change Fit the continued goals we had around virtualization as a whole

The Major Players in 2014

Citrix Service Provider Program Daa. S providers that choose to be a part of the CSP program CSPs extend their SPLA features with Citrix products and special licensing Subject to SPLA Citrix + service provider working in concert Validated designs from Citrix

Citrix Workspace Services http: //workspace. citrix. com

VMWare Horizon Daa. S Based on the Desktone acquisition Runs on VMware’s v. Cloud service Allows for a hybrid hosting solution of on and off premise desktops Supports BYOL Single provider vs multiple technologies

Amazon Work. Spaces 2012 R 2 Server desktops (SPLA) Basic and Performance desktop option “Fully managed” in that they turn on auto update for you Xen. Desktop/Xen. App 7. 5 allow direct provisioning on AWS

5 Keys to Pick Your Provider 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) What are you getting? What are their SLAs? Where are they located? Do you have the right to audit? How flexible are they?

Why We Chose a Different Road

How We Overcame the Daa. S Gap The first step in designing the appropriate Daa. S solution is to prioritize your goals. Most important to us was the lack of user impact. Given our applications and data requirements the only solution was an on-premises Daa. S environment.

When Daa. S Becomes Iaa. S Desktop as a Service very quickly became Infrastructure as a Service! But who owns what?

Pros and Cons of On Premise Daa. S Pros Still get a per seat cost Still can offload support and infrastructure management to a 3 rd party Can grow at the pace you dictate 3 rd party expertise for new initiatives Local connection between the desktop and apps Gives you segregation from any other Daa. S client Cons Requires good management and division of labor to actually save on soft costs You have to have the space to provide Requires a vendor willing to be flexible in the configuration and support Forecasting is MUCH more important Your infrastructure changes are THEIR infrastructure changes

Lessons Learned Define your roles Test and test again Map out technology differences Marketing is important

How Successful is our Daas Initiative? 23, 000 in-house VDI we own and manage 15, 000 Daa. S VDI to provide new capacity and DR infrastructure Integrated Xen. Desktop 7. 1 farms with management scopes defined for each supporting group Active user migration process to reduce the size of in-house managed VDI through 2016

The Future of Daa. S? My best guess… More hybrid solution focus Demand for Microsoft to change their licensing model Daa. S quickly fades to a component of Iaa. S for large corporations The gradual decoupling of the apps from the desktop pushes us into a whole new model

WWMD - What Will Microsoft Do? Google “Project Mohoro” for Microsoft Daa. S references Best guess – Will follow the model of VMware only with Hyper. V and allow Citrix integration

Other Resources http: //blogs. citrix. com/tag/desktop-as-a-service/ http: //blogs. forrester. com/category/daas http: //workspace. citrix. com

Questions? Contact info: Paul@paulstansel. com http: //citrixtips. com @pstansel © 2014 Aetna Inc. All rights reserved.

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