The Record - Issue 20: Spring 2021

58 www. t e c h n o l o g y r e c o r d . c om V I EWPO I NT I t’s fair to say that, for many organisations, the prospect of a global pandemic was not the scenario their business continuity plans were built for. When we hear the word ‘disaster’, we tend to imagine sudden catastrophic events – earthquakes, floods, accidents or perhaps data breaches. And yet here we are. Almost a year after closing our head office, we at Teradici, like many of you, are mostly still working remotely from home, with plans to continue to do so for at least several more months. With this new reality, many organisations have found themselves reassessing their business con- tinuity priorities. Typically in a planning scenario, it’s common to categorise some functions as ‘mission critical’, that is, crucial to the immediate continued operations of the business, and some as ‘business critical’, which designates them as important to the long-term health of the business but able to withstand temporary disruption. As we adjust to the long-term nature of the cur- rent situation, the lines between mission critical and business critical have shifted. Perhaps your business continuity plan included providing vir- tual desktops for mission critical functions, and you assumed that other team members could make do temporarily by using personal devices. As time goes on, that patchwork may have worn thin – employees tire of its clumsiness, onboard- ing new team members is difficult, and produc- tivity suffers. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Offering fast time-to-value, solutions like Teradici Cloud Access Software (CAS) can help deliver an uncompromised desktop user experience for all employees, allowing them to work from any- where, and from any device. CAS enables access to secure, remote desktops and workstations in the Microsoft Azure cloud, which can be config- ured for even the most demanding users requiring professional-grade graphics. For cost-sensitive customers, Azure alsooffers its newseries of virtual desktops called NVv4 which offer partial graphics processing units for better price performance. Easy to deploy, CAS boasts built-in features for peace of mind. Data protection via PC-over-IP (PCoIP) technology, for example, ensures data never leaves the cloud. Other features include streamlined management, support for hybrid environments and dynamic network adaptation, with no impact on performance or produc- tivity. Available through the Microsoft Azure Marketplace and supported on both Azure and Azure Stack Hub , CAS has already proven invaluable to companies operating across every industry. Jellyfish Pictures, f or example, has saved approximately $100,000 in server costs and countless hours of artists’ time by moving production to Azure, and it strengthened its con- tent security in the process. Ultimately, as remote desktops become more popular than ever, solutions like that from Teradici enable the speed and efficiency that busi- nesses need to maintain secure and uninterrupted operations during this global crisis and beyond. John McVay is director of strategic alliances at Teradici J OHN MCVAY : T E RAD I C I As business continuity plans are adjusted to reflect longer-term scenarios, virtual desktops in the cloud are proving to solve a number of challenges From business critical to mission critical