Nursing homes IT management with UDS cloud VDI

• Name: Amavir

• Sector: Health

• Number of employees: 4.500

• Number of nursing homes de residencias: 41

• Location: Spain

With 41 nursing homes spread over 7 autonomous regions, the management and maintenance Amavir’s IT equipment would be extremely complex without desktop virtualization. “As we have a lot of geographic dispersion, we considered that the adoption of a VDI solution was the best approach,” explains Ibor Rodríguez, IT Systems and Technology Manager at Amavir.

This technology allows them to carry out all IT tasks centrally through a single console. It avoids the need to physically travel to each location to configure the devices, apply updates, security patches and other IT procedures required by the workstations, which involve high personnel and travel costs.

UDS Enterprise is the solution they trust to take full advantage of all the benefits of VDI. “The technology that we used in some 30 nursing homes was discontinued and did not allow us to advance. The versatility of UDS Enterprise is helping us to migrate to a new, much more efficient environment in a very simple way,” says Rodríguez.

The Amavir project has very specific technical requirements. The chosen connection broker should be able to seamlessly integrate with Telefónica’s vDirector platform, since Amavir nursing homes use their infrastructure as a service (IaaS).

“The possibility of being able to participate in the product roadmap suggesting the incorporation of new functionalities was critical when choosing UDS Enterprise, since our case is exceptional, and we usually need features that are not implemented”, assures the IT Manager. In this case, they requested the incorporation of support for VMware Cloud Director and the UDS Enterprise development team had it ready in record time

Among the many benefits that this solution brings them, the option of using low-cost devices as connection clients to the virtual desktops stands out. “To cut costs in IT equipment, we primarily use Linux thin clients at our facilities. The flexibility of the software allows to use any device with a web browser. This was very useful during the Covid-19 alarm state, since we were able to offer the option of working from home to professionals who, due to their specialty, could do so. They only needed their own device to access the tools they use to carry out their work,” remarks Rodríguez.

The IT team is receiving very positive feedback from users. “They highly value the ubiquity of their workplace and also notice that their devices run much faster,” states the CTO.

SCALABLE VDI WITHOUT INCREASING COST

Amavir’s VDI infrastructure with UDS Enterprise serves a wide variety of professionals. Managers, doctors, coordinators, nurses, assistants, physiotherapists, occupational therapists… They all need to use IT solutions such as office suites or business management software in their daily activities. “The usual thing is to have 500 concurrent users on the platform. We work with fixed instances, but sometimes we have to reboot the whole system. UDS Enterprise performs this restoration really fast, without affecting the service. This ability to guarantee business continuity was another reason that made us choose UDS,” comments Rodríguez.

Nowadays, Amavir has about 700 VDI users. And they are planning to increase this number. During this year 2020, in addition to migrating all the centers to the infrastructure with UDS Enterprise, they will implement desktop virtualization in the 11 nursing homes that are still working with local desktops. As they have a UDS Enterprise subscription for unlimited users, they can scale the infrastructure to provide service to all those who require it without affecting the cost.

The roadmap of their project with UDS Enterprise also includes taking advantage of other interesting software functionalities, such as application virtualization or remote access to physical devices. The wide range of possibilities offered by this solution is one of the aspects best valued by the Amavir IT Manager. “In addition to combining VDI, vApp and remote connection, UDS Enterprise has the great advantage of supporting the simultaneous running of multiple virtualization platforms, hyperconvergence systems, connection protocols or authenticators. For any company that wants to have its data centralized and full control of their desktops and vApp in a single point, abstracting users from issues, UDS Enterprise is the best solution,” he concludes

VDI INFRASTRUCTURE

• Broker: UDS Enterprise

• Virtualization platform: VMware vCloud Director

• Connection protocols: RDP and HTML5

• Authenticator: Windows Active Directory

• VDI OS: Linux

• VDI access OS: Linux and Windows

• IaaS platform resources: 14 TB storage, 700 vCPU and 1.400 GB memory for all nursing homes.