Successfully controlled their growing IT costs by using Owtware iCONN Server
FRANCO VAGO has managed to develop and perfect a range of extremely specialized and complete services, capable of meeting the specific requirements of its clients, thanks to its flexible organizational structure and constant attention paid to technological innovations, above all in the data transmission and communications, as well as to its consolidated relationship with the major air, sea and land carriers. To manage the difficulties that the company may meet during rapid growth, FRANCO VAGO adopted the Owtware iCONN Server to create a cloud desktop system. They use the system to centrally manage their user data and applications in their China headquarters to ensure security of company data, simplify desktop management, improve the user experience, and increase operational efficiency of the company.
FRANCO VAGO S.p.A. International Freight Forwarders has been established in Milano on October 1981; since the beginning the Company is dedicated to the freight forwarding business by air, sea and land, logistics and distribution services all over the world.
For over 30 years, FRANCO VAGO has been dealing in International Freight Forwarding Industry acquiring considerable experience to and from the major worldwide trade markets and today ranks among the leading transport companies, with a marked specialization in the high value added products forwarding, above all high fashion.
FRANCO VAGO has managed to develop and perfect a range of extremely specialized and complete services, capable of meeting the specific requirements of its clients, thanks to its flexible organizational structure and constant attention paid to technological innovations, above all in the data transmission and communications, as well as to its consolidated relationship with the major air, sea and land carriers.
To manage the difficulties that the company may meet during rapid growth, FRANCO VAGO adopted the Owtware iCONN Server to create a cloud desktop system. They use the system to centrally manage their user data and applications in their China headquarters to ensure security of company data, simplify desktop management, improve the user experience, and increase operational efficiency of the company.
Challenges
Simplify IT. The difficulty of managing a growing install base of PCs created new challenges and problems for Franco Vago. Qualified IT staff are difficult to find and even harder to retain. The existing IT staff faced challenges to keep up. They were looking for a solution that would simplify the IT burden, and allow them to handle more employees with less effort.
Remote Administration. Being in the logistics business, Franco Vago naturally has a widely distributed IT challenge. They were looking for a better way to manage the IT for their 8 existing warehouse and distribution center locations in China, and to cover the IT needs of additional planned offices distributed throughout China. In some locations it is quite difficult to find IT staff qualified to handle the many integrated applications required to manage their business. So they were looking for a way to remotely manage their branch office IT from their main office in Shanghai.
Remote Access. With their headquarters located in Italy, the staff often had to stay overtime to finish projects or have high-bandwidth communications with their colleagues in Europe. This meant staying at the office until late at night in order to accommodate the time zone difference between China and Europe. A better solution would be to enable remote access for office employees, but in a way that guaranteed the strict data security requirements that they had from their clients.
Data Security. Many of Franco Vago’s clients are absolute top companies in the fashion industry. These clients require strict safeguards on the information regarding their customer base, inventory, shipments and deliveries. With a traditional PC environment, delivering on these requirements was difficult. Franco Vago was looking for better ways to use technology to solve their business needs, and virtualization was a natural fit for solving this requirement for data security.
Control Costs. Franco Vago’s business goals include efforts to control costs and operate more efficiently. With many of their existing PCs failing, they were looking for alternatives that would be more reliable while still controlling costs of replacing their entire infrastructure.
Solution
Plug-and-Play. Owtware’s iCONN Server can be installed and running in just 5 minutes. Because of the unique software-defined all-in-one design, there are no additional external dependencies to install and configure. All system functions can be up and operational simply by powering on the system. This reduces the amount of up-front investment required to switch to the new solution.
Intuitive. The Owtware iCONN Server’s user and management interface is patterned after simple web applications. There are no extra client packages to install and configure. This means that the user interface is simple and intuitive, helping the user to be quickly master common functions and operations. This allows the customer’s existing IT staff to quickly master the basics of operating a cloud desktop solution.
Reuse Existing PCs. While some of the existing PCs were facing hardware failure and performance issues, the majority of the PCs were still functional. In order to control the cost of migrating to a cloud-based desktop environment, the existing PCs were repurposed to be simple thin-client devices. The operations systems were replaced with a single-purpose client OS to enable users to connect to the hosted virtual desktops.
Integrated Storage. One of the main challenges with controlling data security was the public access to shared storage servers from the previous deployment. Owtware iCONN Server has built-in support for managing and integrating access to shared storage through a secure host-managed interface. This allows the administrator to have full control of the storage servers, integrate them into the desktop environments so that the only access method for the shares are through the managed virtual desktops. This delivers total data security in an isolated data-center network.
One-Port Protocol. One of the big challenges with offering remote access to server-hosted virtual desktops is the complex networking configurations required by other vendors. Owtware iCONN Server’s unique protocol multiplexing over HTTPS (PMOH) allows IT administrators to provide secure remote access to VMs using only a standard router using a single port-forwarding rule.
Quick Templates. Owtware iCONN Server’s unique quick templates feature allows administrators to quickly and easily configure standard desktop templates with different applications and configurations. The templates can even be “Pre-booted” so that users don’t have to wait for the guest operation system’s boot sequence. This reduces IT time required to set up new desktops for users, and increases user satisfaction by reducing boot times.
Security. Owtware iCONN Server comes with a comprehensive security and policy management system to enable IT administrators to define fine-grained policies to control access to the system. Virtual desktop machines can be completely isolated from end-user networks ensuring complete data security. Comprehensive device access control policies further ensure data security while enabling end-users to still use necessary devices such as A/V equipment.
Benefits
Remote Administration reduced IT travel requirements by 80%. Because of the newly available remote access capability, Franco Vago saw an average increase in user engagement per day of over 40%.
Summary
Franco Vago successfully controlled their growing IT costs by using Owtware iCONN Server and leveraging the centralized management capability of server-hosted virtual desktops. Data security was assured by isolating access to sensitive information through managed VMs only. By enabling remote access to the virtual desktops, the management saw a marked increase of user productivity.