What does “great performance” mean to you? Those of us in the IT world (and particularly in the world of VDI) instantly think of the speed and response time of our applications. In this busy, pedal-as-fast-as-you-can environment we live in, it seems like nothing ever happens fast enough. Whether you think of performance the same way we do or your idea of a “great performance’ happens in a theater on Broadway, we all have a “gold standard” against which we are gauging “greatness”.

Guest blogger Andy Knauf, CIO of Mead & Hunt, shares his journey to cloud GPU workstations. 

Have you ever been challenged with opening a new architecture-engineering consulting office, 1,000 miles away, within three weeks? Well, if you ever are, I have some tips for you, because that's exactly what was asked of me and my team of information technology specialists. Ultimately my team was able to deliver a model that works well and results in lower costs and fewer hassles. How did we achieve this? After much trial and error, we found the correct tool: Workspot Workstation Cloud on Microsoft Azure. If you have ever thought about or tried virtualizing GPU workstations, you're going to want to hear our story!

For a very long time - really since the beginning of VDI and virtual apps - we have been thinking about VDI scalability all wrong. In the yesteryear of VDI, when we talked about scalability, we were referring to the scalability of the VDI broker for a single site. In the age of the cloud, everything has changed, and now VDI scalability is about the number of cloud regions for each tenant.

There are countless articles about the rise of the IT executive as a strategic player whose team enables the organization to pursue its business strategy through technology. That’s all fine and good conceptually, but how do these technology leaders actually grab that seat at the table while the business strategy is being debated and formulated, rather than being the technology “afterthought”? If you live and breathe technology, you know that it just makes good sense for IT to be at the core of strategic planning because technology is the foundation on which a company will achieve a competitive advantage. But sometimes that is easier said than done.