In an interaction with Rachana Jha, Vijender Yadav, CEO & Co- founder, Accops Systems, explains the future trends in virtualisation and the company’s plans for 2019
How important is it for organisations to virtualise their workspaces ?
Virtualisation brings centralisation to both enterprise data and IP, data control and desktop management. Virtualising the workspace allows IT to manage the need of end-user computing of a large workforce from a central location, delivering access to business applications in a policy-controlled environment. In a virtual environment, the data and IP of the company remains within the data center providing better data security and compliance.
A typical device in an organisation is used for both critical as well as non-critical application access. Business applications generally do not have sophisticated security control as the focus is more on business functions and so these applications are more prone to contain or create security risks. When critical and non-critical applications are accessed from same device, the critical applications are exposed to wider threat vector. New applications, data, peripherals continue to connect to the PC and hence the status of the PC is always changing. Anti-virus and other endpoint security solutions are dependent on a signature and they can never provide full protection against zero-day attacks.
While designing IT and security practices, CIOs, CSIOs and IT teams have to keep in mind seamless user experience and user centric approach while designing IT, security and compliance policies for their enterprise business. Employees expect quick and easy access to information from any location while enterprises focus on simplifying IT management without compromising on the security. This is only possible with secure virtualisation of entire workspace environment. In addition, security compliances and regulations in every industry are getting stricter with time and the threat of cyber-attacks is growing which exponentially which only illustrates the urgent need of virtualisation, both an application and infrastructure level.
What are the current and future trends that drive desktop virtualisation industry ?
The future trends in desktop virtualisation industry are focused on innovation at its core, on improving the experience for end users and making it easier for them to accomplish business-critical tasks. In the future, employees will find self-service access to devices, and applications, as a standard. As cloud apps such as Salesforce, Office 365 gain traction in the enterprise, employees would expect to move seamlessly between mobile and desktop versions of all applications and be able to store and share information with ease. These applications will be tailored to the individual’s working context and be accessible through a single sign-on. In the future, digital workspaces will evolve in step with advances in cloud platforms and artificial intelligence. As digital workspaces grow, it’s not unfeasible to imagine integrations with virtual reality as well, hand-swipeable dashboards, voice-to-text processing and recognition, and automated chat services that utilise big data to provide future insights. With employees wanting to access business information from anywhere, enterprises are increasingly adopting work from home or telecommute policies to enable business continuity. Work from home, on the device of their own choice, increases the overall productivity of the workforce. 91 per cent employees assert that they get more work done outside of an office, as per a survey done by tiny pulse, an employee engagement firm.
Organisations are also witnessing increased usage and adoption of cloud and SaaS-based applications. Integration of latest technologies in cloud applications, their operational efficiency and simplicity are resulting in faster adoption of SaaS-based applications.
With emerging on-demand access, more endpoints are accessing business applications outside of the corporate perimeter. Security of business data and seamless digital access outside of the corporate perimeter hence becomes a challenge while adopting the newer trends.
What are the latest offerings from Accops?
We have launched a product “Accops HyLabs” which is virtual lab orchestration and access solution for education and training industry. We are also launching a new offering “Accops Workspace”, a secure digital workspace that provides a unified portal to securely access all business applications, combining various services from Accops like single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, workspace virtualisation and secure remote access. Our Workspace portal can provide access to on-premise and cloud deployed as well as SaaS applications providing an easy way for users to locate and access a provisioned business application. A user can seamlessly roam between office network and public network while accessing the same workspace portal reducing the need for additional VPN and reducing the number of support calls. We give enterprises enhanced security coupled with mobility and ease of use, while protecting their business-critical data.
We also ensure stronger authentication policies and enhanced security for organisations. The major components of Accops Workspace are server-hosted virtual desktops (VDI), desktop-as-a-service, remote secure access, local virtual desktop, application virtualisation, mobile workspaces, native application as-a-service and enterprise mobility management.
Please highlight the recent milestones achieved by the company.
Accops recorded YoY growth of 100 per cent in the last financial year and targets to grow at 100 per cent this year. Recently, SME Channels awards recognised Accops as ‘Most Innovative Product for SMEs’. On the distributor front, we have partnered with Brightstar as its national distributor to strengthen its channel network across India. We have acquired large education customers recently and HyLabs product for education vertical has been received very well by large universities.
We work across major industries, including banking and financial institutions, healthcare, pharmaceutical, ITES, manufacturing, etc. Axis Bank, SBI Life Insurance, Wockhardt Pharmaceuticals, L&T, Bharat Forge, LIC, Wockhardt Hospitals, Tech Mahindra, Anand & Anand and Café Coffee Day are a few prominent customers of Accops. We are also excited to work with Indian government customers under the Startup India Program.
What are your future plans for Vision 2020?
Our digital workspace will open newer opportunities in 2019 and beyond that will enable organisations to securely move to cloud with centralised IT infrastructure. Our unified workspace consolidation will enable secure governance for enterprises and seamless mobility for employees, resulting in growth and increased productivity.
We are focused on enhancing and growing the channel partner network. The major strategic shift that we will make in the coming years is to expand our partner network beyond APAC to North America and Europe. The major focus is on how we can enable our partners to sell better and serve better.
By 2020, we are targeting to become the number one player in secure digital workspace solution in India and other APAC countries. Secure digital workspace is a core part of the digital transformation journey for every enterprise. An enterprise cannot transform itself with legacy desktop computing based end-user computing where it takes days and weeks to provision a new PC or an application.
For years we have been seeing that with the Moore’s law flash memory, solid state drives prices decline and the trend towards virtualisation rise. We are often asked after virtualising the data center, the desktop, what else? The answer is simple, virtualise cell phones, and that’s our bet with solutions like HyMobile a mobile device management solution, a virtual mobile is already here!
Accops Workspace will enable enterprises to enable workspace flexibility in the coming years. We will empower our customers to expand their use of VDI technology and move the mission-critical application from desktop to data centres or cloud.