10 Most Common Questions I Hear as a DaaS Engineer

Because desktop virtualization, and desktop as a service (DaaS) in particular, is a fast growing field, many IT teams and business leaders have questions. As a DaaS engineer at Dizzion, I commonly hear questions and concerns about integration, performance, access, licensing and many other topics. Here are 10 of the most common topics I discuss with companies exploring DaaS.

1. How does my data stay separate from other customers on your platform?

Customers are deployed their own Private Cloud Virtual Datacenter (PCVDC) which includes dedicated virtual firewalls, load balancers, connection servers, authentication servers and VLANs and IP addresses. This ensures each customer is completely isolated from one another.

2. My organization already has services located on-prem and at my colocation data centers, how do Dizzion’s cloud desktops connect to these existing services, in a secure manner?

There are a few different ways Dizzion can handle this. In some scenarios, your dedicated virtual firewalls can establish site-to-site VPN tunnels back to your existing locations. Some customers may be located in the same data centers as our cloud PODs and can choose to connect over a dedicated cross-connect. Customers that need dedicated circuits like MOE and MPLS can terminate these into our cloud as well. This last method is where we deploy our technology in the customer’s data center and cross connect within your data center.

3. Do my users need to remember another username and password to access their cloud desktop?

No, we integrate with your existing Active Directory (AD) services. Each customer receives a pair of AD Domain Controllers in their PCVDC, Dizzion will join all computer accounts to this resource domain. A Dizzion Engineer will work with your AD Engineer to establish an Active Directory Forest Trust, this way your organization can stay in full control of usernames and password, along with provision access to Dizzion desktops.

4. My organization requires multi-factor authentication (MFA), how do we continue using this service in your cloud?

Dizzion offers MFA as a service. We can also ingrate with your current MFA solution in most cases.

5. What is performance like, are my end users going to be happy? 

Dizzion has built our proprietary hyper-converged infrastructure with the end user’s performance at the forefront of the design. Each POD (48u rack of our equipment) contains up to four redundant modular hardware clusters.

These clusters were developed from the end user in rather than from the infrastructure out. Our goal from the start was to deliver the best end user experience possible. We have limits on the load put on each cluster as to not effect end user experience. We regularly deploy HD video and softphones inside of the virtual desktop very successfully. End user satisfaction is extremely high on our solution.

6. How does my organization support its end users while they are connecting to Dizzion’s Cloud Desktop?

Beyond traditional software provisioning and support, Dizzion also uses its proprietary Cloud Orchestration Service Management Operations System (COSMOS). COSMOS allows Dizzion to efficiently operate global infrastructure and customer deployments via a highly integrated provisioning and service management system. It provides customers visibility into their individual environments, offering insight into workloads, service delivery and consumption trends.

The COSMOS system also gives you a single pane of glass for creating help desk tickets, a calendar with your maintenance windows and desktop utilization graphs, just to name a few.

7. How much bandwidth do my end users need to use your service?

Task workers that typically use the web and office products average 100-200kbps per user. Knowledge workers that use video and voice average 1-2Mpbs per user.

8. Does Dizzion support softphones?

Dizzion has built our own proprietary hyper-converged infrastructure with end user performance in mind. With this extreme performance, softphones are able to be run on the Dizzion platform, our Dizzion VDI engineers are seasoned and have the right expertise to tune the virtual desktops to ensure all phone traffic gets prioritization over any other application traversing the VDI channel. We have customers running many different vendors like Avaya, Cisco, Five9s, inContact, etc. Our customers can take advantage of BYOD and work at home initiatives while being able to cut down on hardware and shipping costs by avoiding the capitalization of hard phones. Users can simply plug in a USB-headset and be up and running in minutes.

9. What compliant practices does Dizzion adhere to?

Dizzion is deployed in state of the art data centers around the world. Each of these data centers adhere to SOC I, II and III compliance. Dizzion takes compliance a step further by offering the DaaS industry’s first third party audited HIPAA and PCI compliant platform, all the way down to the desktop. Dizzion includes more than 12 additional technologies to achieve this fully compliant state, which significantly reduces our customer’s security audit scope. Dizzion offloads or shares responsibility for more than 60% of the controls for both HIPAA and PCI compliance. Dizzion has a published responsibility matrix that details each control so your QSA can understand which controls Dizzion is covering, reducing a significant amount of responsibility, complexity and cost.

10. How does Microsoft licensing work in your cloud?

Customers can take advantage of Dizzion’s Microsoft Service Provider Licensing Agreement (SPLA). This feature allows customers to grow seasonally, without the headaches of buying perpetual licenses. Using Dizzion’s SPLA, customers do not have to worry about all the other Microsoft virtualization licenses like VDA, Datacenter and CDL licenses like traditional VDI deployments. Dizzion also offers Microsoft Office in this same agreement for organizations that want to take the additional burden of Microsoft licensing off their plates.

Customers are also able to bring their own licensing if they already have an Enterprise Licensing Agreement in place with Microsoft.

You may also like:

• Biggest Obstacles to a Successful DaaS Implementation
• Making the Business Case for Virtual Desktops
• Which “As a Service” Platform is Right for You?