ControlUp, at the forefront of Digital Employee Experience (DEX) management, announced that UK managed services provider, ebb3, has standardized on the ControlUp DEX platform to enhance the management of its clients’ business critical Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environments and the corporate endpoints used by hybrid office workers.
This is enabling ebb3 to proactively and easily monitor clients’ systems to improve the overall digital employee experience, streamline the control of IT, reduce costs and enable the optimization of VDI systems used including Citrix, Omnissa (formerly VMware) and Microsoft, across both public and hybrid cloud deployments.
Specializing in accelerated computing on VDI and AI platforms, ebb3 works in a variety of industry sectors in the UK such as construction, architecture, motorsports and the public sector. Key customers include Aston Martin, Morgan Sindall Group, Simpson Haugh, Scott Brownrigg and housing association, Wallsall Housing Group.
“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,” explains Jav Fiaz, ebb3’s Technical Architect & Senior Platform Engineer. “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.”
This is important because most of ebb3’s clients use powerful CAD/CAM applications to do their work – leveraging server-based grid technology from NVIDIA – such as Catia, Enscape, Revit, Rhino and Twin Motion. To run these graphics-intensive solutions in a VDI environment requires specialized configuration and accurate monitoring to ensure that the heavy workload demands are properly optimized by the backend compute.
ControlUp helps ebb3 with the sizing and capacity planning of servers so that the applications are properly implemented, with real-time monitoring of GPU, CPU, memory and IO usage during user acceptance testing and after rollout ensuring that systems are responsive and work seamlessly and as expected. Furthermore, ControlUp is also used by ebb3 to carry out health checks of clients’ VDI environments if they already have the software installed and provide continuous monitoring of the customer’s digital experience.
“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,” says Fiaz. “This could be because someone is downloading lots of massive files or not optimizing 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.”
Since COVID-19 and the boom in remote working, the monitoring of clients’ VDI environments has expanded out of data centers to include physical endpoints, too. Here ebb3 is capitalizing on 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 actually 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,” explains Fiaz.
ControlUp also delivers a variety of other benefits to ebb3:
- Platform independent and future proof. ControlUp’s support for multiple technology stacks in VDI/DaaS, such as Citrix, Ominisa and Microsoft, and multiple endpoint OS support means that regardless of what technologies are used today, or what might be used tomorrow, ebb3 can continue to utilize the same approach to DEX management and utilize the platform for sizing and costing during any future migration.
- Intuitive and easy to use. Previously the MSP used another monitoring software solution. “Quite frankly, you almost had to have a degree to run it. Not only was it complex but expensive to implement,” says Fiaz. “With ControlUp, the screen layouts are simple and elegant and the software does a lot straight out of the box. On the face of it, everything looks very simple, but there are a lot of stats available if you want to delve deeper. This means first-line support all the way up to technical architects can benefit.”
- Elegant architecture means it’s simple to deploy. Leveraging a cloud-based management platform, ControlUp is straightforward to install and quick to get up and running on client sites. Agent and agentless technology gather data from endpoints and other parts of the virtual architecture, with information fed back instantaneously to ebb3.
- Technical support which excels. ebb3 has benefitted from attentive, knowledgeable and quick support from ControlUp developers, with new product features being added all the time. Remote control, logon times, application crashes and many more historically troublesome experience issues can be identified and resolved in minutes, with automation being used to prevent similar issues happening to other users or clients.
“Our platform is ideal for any organization looking to improve their IT management capabilities and enhance the digital experience for employees,” says Robert Ellis, UK Sales Director at ControlUp. “Our comprehensive feature set, ease of use along with exceptional support makes it invaluable for MSPs like ebb3 who are judged on the quality of service they deliver to their own customers.”
Fiaz concludes, “Moving forward, we see ControlUp as a key strategic partner for ebb3 and plan to continue integrating their innovative solutions into our managed service offerings to drive more value for our clients.”
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