What role does Accops play in changing the way companies operate?
We are focused on delivering a complete solution suite, coupled with professional services around the whole end-user computing use case. Accops is a provider of secure digital workspace solutions that enable enterprises to increase workforce and operational efficiency and create competitive differentiation by enabling seamless enterprise mobility and anywhere, anytime access to business applications. Having an effective digital workspace strategy in place enables organisations to expand quickly and execute new projects faster, bring the costs down and creating competitive differentiation.
Using Accops’ workspace virtualisation, employees and vendors can securely access business applications from remote locations, thereby increasing the overall productivity of the organisation. Our secure workspace virtualisation also enables enterprises to execute projects with enhanced agility faster and efficiently, within weeks, compared to months taken earlier. We empower enterprises with the right tools to face challenges posed by cloud, mobility, big data and artificial intelligence. Accops’ intelligent, secure digital workspace, flexible and secure platform open newer opportunities which will enable organisations to securely move to cloud with centralised IT infrastructure.
How important is it for organisations to virtualise their workspace?
Virtualisation brings centralisation to both, enterprise data and IP, data control and desktop management. Virtualising the workspace allows IT to manage the need of end-user computing of a large workforce from a central location, delivering access to business applications in a policy-controlled environment. In a virtual environment, the data and IP of the company remains within the data centre, which provides better data security and compliance.
A typical device in an organisation is used for both critical as well as non-critical application access. Business applications generally do not have sophisticated security control as the focus is more on business functions; so these applications are more prone to contain or create security risks. When critical and non-critical applications are accessed from same device, the critical applications are exposed to wider threat vector. Also, a PC is always changing and new applications, data, peripherals continue to connect to the PC. Antivirus and other endpoint security solutions are dependent on a signature and they can never provide full protection against zero-day attacks.
While designing IT and security practices, CIOs, CISOs and IT teams must keep in mind seamless user experience and user-centric approach while designing IT, security and compliance policies for their enterprise business. Employees expect quick and easy access to information from any location while enterprises focus on simplifying IT management without compromising on security. This is only possible with secure virtualisation of the entire workspace environment.
In addition, security compliances and regulations in every industry are getting stricter with time and the threat of cyber attacks is growing exponentially. This illustrates the urgent need of virtualisation both an application and infrastructure level. With digitisation and mobile commerce growing rapidly with help of the government, industries such as BFSI, healthcare, pharmaceutical, etc follow mandatory compliances and rules.
What are the current and future trends driving the desktop virtualisation industry?
The future trends in the desktop virtualisation industry are focused on innovation at the core, on improving the experience for end users and making it easier for them to accomplish business-critical tasks. In the future, employees will find self-service access to devices, and applications, as a standard. As cloud apps such as Salesforce, Office 365 gain traction in the enterprise, employees would expect to move seamlessly between mobile and desktop versions of all applications and be able to store and share information with ease. These applications will be tailored to the individual’s working context and be accessible through a single sign-on. In the future, digital workspaces will evolve in steps, with advances in cloud platforms and AI.
As digital workspaces grow, it’s not unfeasible to imagine integrations with virtual reality as well as hand-swipeable dashboards, voice-to-text processing and recognition, and automated chat services that utilise big data to provide future insights. With employees wanting to access business information from anywhere, enterprises are increasingly adopting work-from-home or telecommute policies to enable business continuity. Working from home, on the device of their choice, increases the overall productivity of the workforce – 91 per cent of employees assert that they get more work done outside of an office, as per a survey done by Tiny Pulse, an employee engagement firm.
Organizations are also witnessing increased usage and adoption of cloud and SaaS-based applications. Integration of latest technologies in cloud applications, their operational efficiency and simplicity are resulting in faster adoption of SaaS-based applications.With emerging on-demand access, more endpoints are accessing business applications outside of the corporate perimeter. Security of business data and seamless digital access outside of the corporate perimeter hence becomes a challenge while adopting the newer trends.
What are Accops’ latest offerings?
We have launched ‘Accops HyLabs’ which is virtual lab orchestration and access solution for the education and training industry. We are also launching a new offering, Accops Workspace, a secure digital workspace that provides an unified portal to securely access all business applications, combining various services from Accops, like single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, workspace virtualisation and secure remote access. Our Workspace portal can provide access to on-premise and cloud-deployed as well as SaaS applications, providing an easy way for users to locate and access a provisioned business application. An user can seamlessly roam between office network and public network while accessing the same workspace portal, reducing the need for additional VPN and reducing the number of support calls. We give enterprises enhanced security, coupled with mobility and ease of use, while protecting their business-critical data.
We also ensure stronger authentication policies and enhanced security for organisations. The major components of Accops Workspace are server-hosted virtual desktops (VDI), Desktop-as-a-Service, remote secure access, local virtual desktop, application virtualisation, mobile workspaces, native application as-a-service and enterprise mobility management.
What are the challenges faced in the Indian market?
India is a unique market compared to other global markets, with diverse geo-locations distributed across urban and rural cities. Internet and other IT infrastructure still remain a huge challenge for enterprises looking to expand their reach. The network reliability in India is still not up to the global standards and hence the adoption of newer models like SaaS applications and cloud-based IT infrastructure is still a very nascent stage.
Indian customers also want a human touch at very point of interaction starting from sales, to implementation and then support. This is why sales cycles are longer and unpredicted and a good service delivery team is a must.