18 01732 759725 continued... CLOUD WORKSPACES Preventative Security Model can do for their clients and to lead with IGEL as a practice.” He expects the IGEL Preventative Security Model to attract new partners too. “Going back to the three-ring circus, partners that have expertise in security, identity, access management, SASE and so forth are now starting to leverage IGEL even though they might be new to the deployment methodologies – VDI, DaaS, the browser. In many cases, partners will have a security practice and a deployment practice and we are now seeing more interest from the security practices in new and existing partners, where the security team is coming to the table saying ‘Wow, this IGEL stuff is phenomenal’ and are starting to get trained on it. This is where a partner can become that ring master linking those three rings. Partners are starting to adopt this model and say ‘Ah, we can actually consult with our clients in a different manner if we think like this’.” In February, IGEL strengthened its proposition for channel partners with the launch of a new MSP partner programme that makes it easier for MSPs to deliver secure managed endpoints with MSPoptimised ‘pay as you grow’ licensing and a choice of multi-tenant and single-tenant deployment options. In parallel with this change, Oestermann believes end users are starting to look at IGEL in a new way, with the C-suite in particular beginning to recognise IGEL’s ability to deliver security benefits, financial benefits and sustainability benefits in one go. “A lot of projects get initiated with the CFO or the CIO or the CISO going to the end user compute and security group and saying ‘How come we're not IGEL’d?’. A lot of initiatives are now driven from the C suite. That can be a CFO looking at it from a TCO, financial standpoint or a sustainability standpoint, because they've got to report on sustainability and IGEL is your best friend to reduce e-waste and sweat your assets for longer and reduce the power consumption of your assets as well. Then, CIOs and CISOs often come at this from a security angle – ransomware protection, integration with data protection, compliance. CIOs are very focused on TCO as well. But it could also be a company that is in acquisition mode asking ‘How can we acquire companies and quickly have them adopt our technology platform?’. IGEL is the best way to do that.” https://www.igel.com infrastructure because of its manageability and survivability in those types of situation. OT and IoT is a new frontier for us. How do you secure digital signage, medical devices and national infrastructure against really bad actors? There's a lot of vulnerability on the OT side and in the future IGEL will help on that front as well.” Priorities for 2025 In the meantime, Oestermann’s priorities for the next 12 months are to increase adoption in its five key verticals and to convince partners to lead with IGEL’s Preventative Security Model, rather than just positioning IGEL as part of, say, the Citrix ecosystem. “We are a 100% channel company and we have a lot of very, very good channel partners that are pushing IGEL very hard to their customers. We want to expand the channel and we want to become more important for our existing channel partners, which means more wallet share. We want to be in all their projects. We have a lot of partners who have a Citrix or an Omnissa or a Microsoft practice and have IGEL as an add-on to those projects. What we're working on is for those partners to understand the significance of what the ControlUp just the ticket for ebb3 UK managed services provider ebb3, specialising in accelerated computing on VDI and AI platforms, has standardised on the ControlUp DEX platform to enhance the management of clients’ Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environments and corporate endpoints used by hybrid office workers. Most ebb3 clients use CAD/CAM applications, leveraging server-based grid technology from NVIDIA, such as Catia, Enscape, Revit, Rhino and Twin Motion, and to run these graphics-intensive solutions in a VDI environment requires specialised configuration and accurate monitoring to ensure heavy workload demands are properly optimised by the backend compute. ControlUp enables ebb3 to proactively monitor clients’ systems to improve the overall digital employee experience, streamline the control of IT, reduce costs and enable the optimisation of VDI systems, including Citrix, Omnissa (formerly VMware) and Microsoft, across both public and hybrid cloud deployments. Jav Fiaz, ebb3’s Technical Architect & Senior Platform Engineer, says that ControlUp enables ebb3 to deliver the service quality that customers in construction, architecture, motorsports and the public sector depend on. He said: “We design, install and manage our clients’ VDI solutions so the real-time monitoring provided by ControlUp is absolutely crucial to guarantee service quality, given we’re signing multi-year contracts. ControlUp is our eyes and ears – our feelers out into client environments if you like. Other solutions might poll every two, three or five seconds. That’s too slow. You’d miss problems like why latency is occurring and then not be able to fix root causes quickly. This then impacts the users’ perception and views about their digital workspaces.” ControlUp helps ebb3 with the sizing and capacity planning of servers so that applications are properly implemented, with real-time monitoring of GPU, CPU, memory and IO usage during user acceptance testing and after rollout to ensure systems are responsive and work as expected. “With ControlUp, we can spot rogue workflows which result in burst usage affecting the overall performance health of the VDI system. This has the potential to impact staff productivity and their ability to meet demanding project deadlines. This could be because someone is downloading lots of massive files or not optimising a large 3D model properly which then causes bottlenecks. We can set up alerts and triggers using ControlUp to identify issues before they become problems.” He adds that with the boom in remote working, ebb3 is also using ControlUp’s physical endpoint DEX platform to monitor devices used by staff at home. “Someone logging a support ticket complaining of intermittent performance issues might attribute the problem to the VDI platform. But by using ControlUp, we can drill down into the user session and see if it’s another issue like the speed of their home Wi-Fi connection or position in a building that’s causing latency. It makes problem-solving super-fast,” he said. Other benefits include support for multiple technology stacks in VDI/DaaS (e.g. Citrix, Omnissa and Microsoft) and endpoints; ease of use; simple deployment using a cloud-based management platform; and technical support. www.controlup.com • www.ebb3.com
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