Steps to make cloud workspace services adoption simple and flexible

It’s possible to gain complete freedom to mix on-premise and cloud services that let you choose whether/when to migrate applications, desktops and data.

No one company will ever be the same as another in their journey to the cloud.  However, while there are many unique pathways to the cloud, there are ways to bring simplicity, freedom and flexibility within each step.

Whatever their level of adoption or approach, most organisations will want the flexibility to adopt the cloud services they choose, as well as the freedom to use any combination of on-premises and cloud resources. This article will demonstrate simple ways to activate, secure, manage and optimise diverse cloud services.

There are a few elements of a flexible cloud migration, including:

  • Taking a hybrid approach that gives the flexibility to blend on-premises and cloud services as required, along with the priorities to deliver workspaces;
  • Having integrated tools for operations, migration, onboarding and monitoring that let organisations increase and extend the reach and value of their cloud strategy over time and;
  • Taking an integrated approach to analytics so that administrators can get deep insight into usage, security, performance and user experience of the new cloud services.

A better approach to cloud services adoption

The challenges of cloud adoption can be solved by taking a hybrid approach to managing and aggregating cloud services. For example, Citrix Cloud solves this challenge by keeping the workspace control plane within its cloud environment, while the actual services for virtual applications and desktops, mobility, secure access control and Enterprise File Synchronisation and Sharing (EFSS) can be hosted and executed wherever the organisation chooses – including within on-premises infrastructure.

This makes it easy to integrate applications, desktops and data, it also allows IT administrators to manage and deliver the solution through a single console as digital workspaces that gives the user a unified experience.

While industry hype may suggest that the journey to the cloud should be completed as quickly and completely as possible, the reality is that adoption does not need to be either linear or complete for companies to realise significant benefits. Often, a hybrid cloud or multi-cloud approach is the best option. Indeed, it’s rare to see enterprises with 100 percent cloud infrastructure.

There are three steps that all organisations can consider which deliver choice and flexibility as they adopt cloud services.

Step One – Using tools that extend traditional on-premises workspace software

Companies at the early stages of cloud adoption can make use of smart tools to make on-premises resources easier to manage. For example, Citrix Cloud deploys with Smart Tools to facilitate automated deployment, usage-based scaling, simplified migration, and proactive health checks and repair. This allows IT administrators to:

  • Accelerate time-to-value by removing provisioning bottlenecks and automating deployment of virtual workloads and enterprise applications across datacenters and on- or off-premises clouds;
  • Ensure consistent deployments with an architecture based on best-practices blueprints;
  • Enhance IT operations management of virtual workloads and enterprise applications through proactive application-centric monitoring and alerts; and
  • Provide redundancy and enable automatic scaling and disaster recovery of applications.

Step Two – Hybrid cloud services for companies midway through cloud migrations

As cloud adoption progresses, customers can get up and running quickly with any combination of Citrix hybrid cloud services – running either on-premises or in the cloud – for core requirements including:

  • Delivering secure virtual applications and desktops to any device with the best user experience on any device, across any network;
  • Accessing comprehensive enterprise mobility management and enterprise-grade productivity applications for a secure user experience on BYOD or corporate devices;
  • Securing access control through a single gateway across all types of applications with multi-factor authentication, end-to-end monitoring across all application traffic and contextual access control, and;
  • Providing enterprise file sync and share that lets employees share and send files on any device while IT protects sensitive corporate information in transit and at rest.

Step Three – Going with a cloud-first strategy using simple approaches

Cloud-native Citrix services make it simple for customers to address key use cases within their cloud-based workspace strategy, including:

  • Cloud-hosted secure browsing where IT delivers secure remote access to web and SaaS applications from the cloud through a pre-configured web browser with a custom URL.
  • The application is launched from the cloud or datacenter for an extra layer of security between your corporate network and the endpoint.
  • Cloud-based applications and desktop virtualisation with simple-to-provision services exclusively delivered through Microsoft Azure, which lets IT administrators move backend infrastructure to the cloud to simplify application and desktop delivery while ensuring superior performance, flexibility, manageability and user experience.
  • Cloud-based Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) and EFSS that provide mobility management and file sync and sharing as pure cloud services on a pay-as-you-go SaaS basis.

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Tags Digital Transformation, cloud migration, cloud services, The Cloud

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