Engineering Firm Barge Designs Deploys Cloud VDI to Support Growth Initiative

Challenge:

For Barge Design Solutions, on-premises infrastructure had become an IT management challenge and was not delivering the value the firm required, especially for their smaller branch offices. To support new growth objectives for the firm and control costs, the Barge IT team began exploring alternate end-user computing solutions. The team explored traditional VDI, but solution complexity was an early show stopper.

With 16 offices spanning five states, the engineering firm decided it was time to get out of the hardware business as much as possible and set its sights on pursuing the serverless office. With the use of graphics-intensive apps such as AutoCAD, Revit, Civil 3D, Adobe, BlueBeam and more, power user satisfaction with the solution ultimately chosen would be critical. Initial use cases to be addressed included ensuring company wide-collaboration for remote power users in branch offices and surveyors in the field, as well as the ability to quickly scale virtual desktops up and down to accommodate interns and other temporary workers. Barge CTO Paul Dougherty heard about Workspot from a colleague through the ACEC, conducted their due diligence on the solution, and the team then embarked on a Workstation Cloud proof of value project in 6 locations.

Solution:

• Eliminate hardware in smaller offices
• Rollout Workspot cloud workstations and cloud desktops in Azure
• Add cloud desktops and workstations as needed for new employees & interns

Benefits:

• Users collaborate company-wide in real-time & avoid unnecessary trips into the office
• Fewer IT service desk tickets
• Win new business without investing in offices, equipment and networks
• Ability to scale the Workspot service up or down as project requirements change
• Easily support co-working space that provides a desk, power, and internet
• Disaster recovery is vastly improved with work-anywhere capability