In 2019, Xpedeon realized that its desktop solution – which could only be installed on Windows PCs – was limiting the overall adoption of Xpedeon in the industry.

“Our desktop solution was limited to Windows devices, which prevented organizations from using it on Macs, Chromebooks, or other systems,” said Rajesh Ganeshan, IT Manager at Xpedeon. “Not only did that limit our total addressable market, but it also required the IT teams at our customers to manage and maintain the software on all those devices. Especially as our customers grow and need more users, managing that software on more devices becomes a headache.”

To provide their users with secure web-based access to the ERP software, Xpedeon’s customers were forced to seek out virtualization solutions on their own. Which is when Xpedeon recognized a trend.

Eliminating Virtual Desktop Complexity 

One well-known side effect of the complexity of virtual desktops like Citrix is the need for third-party experts and services to get everything to work, which further increases the overall price of those solutions. 

“If you want to deploy VDI or DaaS solutions like Citrix or VMware, you have to have specialized knowledge. And if you don’t have those certified resources internally, you’re going to need third-party contractors to help deploy and manage the solution for the long term. What we found is that this was not viable for a majority of our customers,” said Rajesh.

“Ultimately, the fact that our customers had to go find a virtualization solution on their own was a problem, and it was hindering adoption of Xpedeon.”

Providing SaaS Access with Zero Redevelopment 

The Xpedeon team determined that to provide the best service to their customers and to enable every organization to adopt their platform regardless of device, it needed to move to a SaaS model. But, in their estimates, it would take at least one and a half years and cost over a million dollars to completely redevelop their solution for the web. 

“It’s not just the time and cost of redevelopment – it’s the competitive advantage that we would have lost. Converting our platform to a web-based version would have taken years, and by the time we had it done, the ship would have sailed and we would have lost business to other SaaS-enabled solutions,” said Rajesh. 

“And because we had experience with Citrix and several other virtual desktop-based solutions in the past, we knew we needed to find a better way. That’s when we discovered Cameyo’s Virtual App Delivery solution,” said Rjaesh.

“When I first started my free trial of Cameyo, I was up and running within two hours, all without having to reach out to Cameyo for help at all. I was really surprised. It worked like a breeze, with zero outside help,” said Rajesh. “From the very start, I was impressed. And it was clear right away that this was the best, most secure, and most seamless path to SaaS-enabling our solution overnight.”

Better Together – Cameyo and Google Cloud

As Xpedeon completed its evaluation of Cameyo, another benefit quickly surfaced – Cameyo’s integration with Google Cloud. 

“We had already selected Google Cloud as our cloud partner, so we really wanted to find a solution that had a proven track record of delivering apps from Google Cloud. The fact that Cameyo is so integrated with Google Cloud and would enable us to either use their fully-hosted solution in Google Cloud or self-host Cameyo in our own instance – that was another key benefit,” said Rajesh.

“We selected Google Cloud because of its security and reliability, and Cameyo’s security, flexibility, performance, and cost-effectiveness are a perfect complement. With Cameyo on Google Cloud, I can rest easy knowing that we’ll always be able to provide secure access for our customers,” said Rajesh. 

The Results

Xpedeon has been a Cameyo customer since 2019, and in the past four years, they’ve recognized the following key benefits:

• Cost Reduction – “Based on our experience and the feedback we have received from customers who previously used Citrix, Cameyo is significantly more cost-effective than Citrix,” said Rajesh.
• Ease of Use – “Cameyo worked right away. I was up and running in hours, with zero help, and no need for third-party contractors or integrators. And from our customers’ perspective, Xpedeon is just a SaaS solution now – they don’t need to do anything special to access it. They simply log in and get access to the full desktop version of our software, delivered seamlessly via the web,” said Rajesh.
• Scalability – “Unlike virtual desktop solutions that get more complex and expensive as the size of your organization and end-users grow, Cameyo is incredibly scalable. The Cameyo platform has built-in elasticity that automatically spins servers up and down as needed with zero intervention needed from me. That elasticity, paired with Cameyo’s usage optimization capabilities, means that Cameyo easily scales with little effort from our team,” said Rajesh. 
• Services & Support – “For four years now, anytime we needed anything, Cameyo has been incredibly responsive and helpful. Even though we’re based in India, Cameyo’s global presence and support was always quick to respond. Also, Cameyo’s team has been a true partner – they listen to our feedback and they work with us,” said Rajesh. 

Growing 50X and Delighting Customers

“We’ve been using Cameyo since 2019, and in four years we’ve increased the number of users on our platform by 50X. Not only has Cameyo been a perfect partner for enabling seamless, secure, web-enabled access to our platform from any device – they’ve helped us do so in a way that truly delights our customers,” said Rajesh.

“By web-enabling our platform with Cameyo, we didn’t have to give up any of the capabilities of our desktop software during the redevelopment process. Customers get the same platform they’ve always relied on – with the exact same experience – but now they can easily access it from anywhere and on any device,” said Rajesh.

“For any software companies that are daunted by the idea of completely re-developing their solutions for the web, I have good news – you don’t need to! Just give Cameyo a try. There’s no easier way to instantly give your customers SaaS access to your software,” said Rajesh. 

The post Xpedeon Selects Cameyo to Deliver its Industry-Leading ERP System as SaaS with Zero Redevelopment appeared first on Cameyo.

Step 1 – Embracing Google for Better Collaboration

“It all started with our decision to replace Office 365 with Google Workspace, because we were looking for a solution that would enable more seamless collaboration across our business,” said Dan Morley, Head of IT Infrastructure and Service at Village Hotels. “The impact Google Workspace has had cannot be overstated – it was transformational for our business.”

“That got us thinking about other ways we could leverage the Google ecosystem to improve and transform our business,” said Morley.  

Step 2 – Doubling Down on Google for a Hardware Refresh

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At the time, Village Hotels was utilizing a combination of Windows laptops and thin client workstations.

“We realized that moving to ChromeOS devices would provide us with a more secure, easy-to-manage, and cost-effective device strategy, so we decided to make the switch,” said Morley. “As part of our hardware refresh we began by replacing our Windows laptops with Chromebooks, and in the second phase we began migrating our thin client workstations to Chromeboxes.”

Because Village Hotels had previously utilized Citrix to provide access to apps on its thin clients, it decided to continue to deliver apps via Citrix as it shifted to ChromeOS. But then two things happened:

1. It realized that Citrix on ChromeOS was causing a disjointed “dual OS experience” where, to access their apps, employees needed to log into a virtual Windows OS experience rather than simply accessing their Windows apps from within ChromeOS.
2. The underlying infrastructure for its Citrix deployment was reaching its end of life, so Village Hotels had to decide whether to undergo an expensive and complex infrastructure refresh, or move to the cloud.

Step 3 – Going All-In on Google, Thanks to Cameyo

“Our strategy as a business was to reduce cost and complexity while increasing our flexibility and productivity. We couldn’t justify making a sizable six-figure investment in refreshing the underlying infrastructure needed to run Citrix, which would have dramatically increased the complexity of our environment rather than streamlining it,” said Morley. 

Instead, Village Hotels took the opportunity to embrace the cloud. 

“When we decided to move to the Cloud, we knew we wanted to go with Google Cloud because it has proven to excel in both security and in its big data capabilities – its ability to help extract value from massive amounts of data,” said Morley. 

“But as part of the decision to sunset our on-premise data center, we needed to find a cloud-native solution for delivering all of our business-critical apps to all our ChromeOS devices from within Google Cloud,” said Morley. 

For example, Village Hotels utilizes multiple Windows-based applications to power their call center operations, including Mitel’s MiCollab and the Red Box. Their call centers rely on these apps for both voice and webchat collaboration with customers, but also for quality assurance. Similarly, Village Hotels uses the leisure ERP platform Exerp to manage all of the gym memberships at its facilities. 

“These are all mission-critical apps that our people need access to all day, every day – so we needed a seamless way to provide people with access to these apps on ChromeOS. It was critical that our people have the same application experience because any disruption to their workflow would directly impact customer service,” said Morley. 

Village Hotels began by evaluating Citrix’s cloud offering, followed by Microsoft’s Azure Virtual Desktop – and then it found Cameyo. 

“We chose Cameyo over Citrix and Azure Virtual Desktop for one key reason – Citrix and AVD were far too complex, pure and simple. And it’s not just the initial complexity of deployment, it’s also the ongoing management. We needed something that could be deployed quickly, and something that wouldn’t require tons of resources to manage moving forward. That was Cameyo,” said Morley. 

“It was a breath of fresh air to see how easy it was to deploy apps to ChromeOS via Cameyo, and to see how simple it is to manage long-term,” said Morley. “With Cameyo, we were able to go all-in with Google and adopt Google Cloud.”

Step 4 – Utilizing Cameyo Rapid Recovery for Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) in Google Cloud

To help ensure business continuity in the case of an outage in their cloud data centers, Village Hotels also decided to utilize Cameyo’s Rapid Recovery service.

The Cameyo Rapid Recovery service runs in Google Cloud and provides Village Hotels with a separate, secure cloud desktop environment powered by Cameyo that they can instantly switch to if their environment is attacked or disrupted, enabling their employees to maintain access to all their business-critical apps in case of emergency. The service includes One-Click Cloud Failover that enables Village Hotels to easily select a backup region so that, in case of an issue in their primary Google Cloud data center location, they can easily switch to the new Google Cloud region(s) without disruption in service to end users.

“Cameyo’s DRaaS capabilities provide us added resilience in case there’s a country-wide outage. It gives us the peace of mind to know that we’re protected and that our people will continue to be able to operate productively with no downtime,” said Morley. “Better yet, it was incredibly easy to turn on and get started. All we had to do was select which regions we wanted as our failover regions. And it’s a nominal cost, especially for the peace of mind it provides.”

The Results

Village Hotels has currently deployed over 500 ChromeOS devices in a shared device model where multiple employees often access the same device. The company decided to utilize the fully-hosted version of Cameyo in Google Cloud, and has realized the following benefits:

Ease of Deployment & Management – “With Cameyo you literally just switch it on, you install your applications on Cameyo’s servers, and then you push them out to your users either as Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) or via a Cameyo portal in any browser. It’s remarkably simple.” 

“Within a week you can have a full solution spun up with Cameyo, no problem. You can actually have apps published to your users with Cameyo within hours – but it’s more realistic to say that for a full, complete deployment it can be done within a week,” said Morley.

Better User Experience – “It’s clear that Cameyo and the ChromeOS team have worked closely together on integration because the user experience is just seamless. They can easily access the full desktop version of all of their apps just as if they were installed locally on the device, but instead, the apps are running from Cameyo. All of the feedback from our users has been incredibly positive,” said Morley. 

Overall Cost Savings – “Right away Cameyo enabled us to avoid the six-figure cost of an infrastructure refresh. But then there are the ongoing costs as well – every five years we would have had to refresh our underlying infrastructure to stay with Citrix.”

“There’s also the ongoing cost savings we experience by not having to manage all of that infrastructure anymore since that is all managed by Cameyo in Google Cloud. Cameyo is simply a budget item, not an ongoing hidden cost,” said Morley. 

The post Village Hotels Replaces Citrix with Cameyo to Complete Its Transition to the Google Ecosystem appeared first on Cameyo.

A few years back, CHC embarked upon a mission to simplify their infrastructure and reduce costs, so they began evaluating virtualization solutions. But given the nature of their business, any changes made would have to not just reduce cost & complexity, but help enhance the user experience and improve patient care.   

The Challenges

“One key issue we were facing was the lack of depth in terms of resources needed to support and manage a wide range of customized desktops. In some facilities, we had nothing but physical desktops which needed to be updated, managed and then replaced every few years. In other locations, we had traditional Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), but that was incredibly costly and complex to manage as well,” said Brian Stopinski, Corporate IT Operations Director, CHC.

“We realized there had to be a better way. Something better than physical desktops, but also something better than traditional VDI, which just moved the issues of physical Windows devices onto virtual desktops,” said Stopinski.

“So we did what most people probably do – we started with all of the biggest players. We spent almost four years evaluating VMware, Citrix, and Nutanix. But it became clear, time and time again, that none of those solutions were feasible from either a cost or complexity perspective. Many of our facilities only have one or two IT personnel, and it typically takes 10 or more people to manage a VDI deployment full time. So it doesn’t matter that these were the solutions that were in the upper right of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant – they simply were not an option for us,” said Stopinski. 

“The reality is, we didn’t know what we didn’t know. We thought we needed to deliver a Windows desktop in order to give everyone access to all their apps, including Windows apps, on any device.”

The Solution

“After years of frustration and realizing that none of the traditional virtual desktop providers would work for us, we gave up on the idea. Until one day, we started talking to the Google Cloud team, and they introduced us to Cameyo,” said Stopinski.

“We were still in the mindset that we needed to deliver a full Windows desktop to give our people access to their apps. So at first, I completely discounted Cameyo and didn’t think it would work for us. But we decided to do an evaluation based on Google’s recommendation,” said Stopinksi. “In our initial evaluation, I was shocked by how small the footprint was of Cameyo’s solution. All of the servers, load balancers, and other infrastructure you have to manage with Windows desktops – we didn’t have to deal with any of that with Cameyo.”

“Then in our first demo session, the Cameyo team showed us how to spin our environment up within 45 minutes. We were up and running with applications published in just 45 minutes. I was absolutely blown away,” said Stopinksi. “Cameyo’s Virtual App Delivery (VAD) technology gives us a streamlined cloud desktop allowing users to access all of the apps and data they need to be productive from anywhere – all without the Windows desktop.”

The Realization

“When I first started my conversation with Cameyo, my mentality was that we had to deliver full Windows desktops. It’s simply the byproduct of 25 years of experience with Windows desktops, and I think a lot of people are still stuck in the same mentality that I was,” said Stopinski. 

“It wasn’t until I saw Cameyo in action that it fully clicked that I did not need to present the entire Windows desktop. I realized that the desktop brings a lot of inherent baggage with it. There’s unnecessary stuff the user doesn’t need which actually complicates their workflow. There’s all this white noise on the Windows desktop that doesn’t make them more productive.” 

“With Cameyo, I finally realized that the user doesn’t need to see the Windows OS. As an organization, we always ask ‘What is the value add?’ whenever we’re evaluating something new. So I applied that question to something old – Windows desktops – and it became obvious that the added value was zero.” 

“In fact, the real value add is the elimination of the Windows desktop, because I don’t have to deal with all the complexity and all of the security concerns that Windows desktops bring. I can also deliver a lower cost solution because I don’t have to license Windows OS, I don’t have to license a Windows Terminal Server, I don’t have to support all of that infrastructure just to deliver the Windows desktop,” said Stopinski. 

The Benefits

• Simplicity – “Every VDI solution I’ve looked at requires a file server to hold that user’s profile data as they roam around. Architecturally, Cameyo figured out a way to do it so that I don’t have to deploy and manage unnecessary resources, which then becomes an unattended expense. Our goal is to deliver and manage fewer things while also providing value. Cameyo helps me accomplish that,” said Stopinski. 
• Cost – “The price point of Cameyo is so attainable and so reasonable, it almost defies logic. When I look at all the bigger company solutions that I evaluated, I realize that there’s just so much complexity and unnecessary baggage that increases the cost dramatically. I’m also not spending countless hours  maintaining the Windows desktop beast,” said Stopinski.
• Support – “The level of support we’ve received from Cameyo has been phenomenal. We get extremely quick responses and engagement from top-notch engineers who really know this technology. They will spend as much time with me as I want to make sure that I have the information I need, but they’ve also let me know that at any time I can pass things over to them and they’ll take care of it if I prefer. I’m simply not going to get that from Citrix and VMware. I’d have to hire additional consultants to handle all of that,” said Stopinski.  

The post Community Hospital Corporation Moves from Windows Desktops to Cloud Desktops with Cameyo appeared first on Cameyo.

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The Challenge

The power of the Moblize suite is exponentially increased based on the number of data sources it can tap into to analyze. And to provide a seamless, single source of truth experience for its users, it needed to bring the functionality of many disparate apps together within the Moblize platform. However, the oil & gas industry is infamous for its reliance on legacy third-party Windows applications that don’t play well together. 

“There are a lot of specialized apps in the oil & gas industry, many of which are very good at one thing or solve one specific problem – and most of those apps are Windows-based and only run on Windows desktops,” said Amitt Mehta, CM\EO at Moblize. “We needed to take all of these legacy desktop apps and bring them into a cloud environment so that anyone, from anywhere, can access them on any device – even tablets and non-Windows laptops.”

“We were trying to figure out how to integrate many disparate third-party Windows apps into our platform. And not just integrate them, but to be able to seamlessly scale all of those apps globally, too,” said Mehta.

The Solution 

Moblize needed a way to bring a multitude of legacy apps into the cloud, without any redevelopment, so that its platform could access those data sources and so that its customers could access all of their critical data in a real-time cloud environment. It also needed to do so in a way that would scale to support a growing global customer base.  

“We reviewed several other platforms but we chose Cameyo because, in our testing, Cameyo proved to be the best platform for enabling third-party apps to scale globally, regardless of the customer’s geographic location or their country’s data privacy laws,” said Mehta.

Cameyo’s virtual application delivery platform enabled Moblize to fully deploy within days, while ensuring that they could give customers a seamless user experience by enabling them to access the full desktop version of the software they’re used to, from any HTML5 browser on any device. 

The Power of Cameyo & AWS

A few years back, Moblize decided to migrate to AWS to take advantage of the reliability, performance, and security benefits that AWS is known for. This decision meant that its solution providers would need to be able to support the migration as well. Cameyo’s platform gives customers complete freedom to utilize Cameyo in any cloud, hybrid, or on-premises environment – making it one of the most flexible virtual application delivery platforms on the market. 

“When we decided to migrate to AWS, Cameyo’s ability to operate in AWS was critical. Cameyo enabled us to quickly and easily self-host their platform in our instance of AWS without the need to install additional gateways or appliances. We only needed to spin up a Windows Server in AWS and install Cameyo on it. It’s really impressive how simple they’ve made it,” said Mehta.

“And while AWS is our cloud partner of choice globally, it’s comforting to know that if we have a customer that needs to operate in a country with strict data privacy laws where AWS doesn’t have local data centers, Cameyo gives us the flexibility to support customers in any environment.”

Key Benefits

Rapid Deployment – “From a business perspective, it’s all about time to market. From the time when we first discovered Cameyo, to the time it took us to test, to the time we were fully deployed – that whole process was just a couple of weeks. The actual deployment of Cameyo took only a couple of days. The fact that Cameyo is so much less complex than other solutions enabled incredibly quick time to market,” said Mehta.

Partnership – “The real test of a successful business partnership is how that partner supports you not just in good times, but in bad times. Cameyo has really been responsive to our changing needs throughout the pandemic, going the extra mile from a support perspective, and even giving us additional discounts when needed as we weather the pandemic-induced market conditions,” said Mehta.  

Cost Savings – “Even without the discounted pricing, Cameyo is by far more cost-effective compared to the other solutions we tested. Not only is Cameyo’s pricing more attractive, but where we really see the cost savings is the overall reduction in complexity and the time required to manage the solution on an ongoing basis. I’d say Cameyo reduces total cost of ownership related to integration complexity and management by at least 25 percent,” said Mehta.

The post Moblize Leverages the Power of AWS and Cameyo to Deliver Cloud-Based Solutions to the Oil & Gas Industry appeared first on Cameyo.

Nordward is a coalition of four leading companies in Sweden, Denmark and Norway that together form the leading provider of fresh fish, seafood and Asian food products throughout Scandinavia. The organization has 290 employees across four locations with annual sales of 1 billion SEK and an aggressive growth plan.

When Nordward made the decision to migrate the entire company over to ChromeOS for greater system security and cost-effectiveness, there were two challenges they needed to solve in order to make the switch.

“First, we needed to establish a phased approach where we could repurpose our existing Windows devices as ChromeOS machines, then move to Chromebooks over time as the older machines need to be replaced,” said Christian Ahlin, Group Head of IT at Nordward. “We also needed a way to provide our people with access to the Windows applications they rely on to do their jobs – most importantly our ERP system – from their Chrome devices.” 

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Together with reseller Online Partner, Sweden’s leading Google solutions specialist, Nordward put together a migration strategy that would enable the company to take advantage of the speed, security, and manageability of ChromeOS without interrupting access to their business-critical Windows apps.

Migrating to Chrome Enterprise

When evaluating the organization’s existing pool of devices, Ahlin realized that it still had plenty of operational Windows laptops. To optimize it’s existing devices while still being able to switch to the security and management benefits of Chrome Enterprise, Ahlin decided to utilize Google’s ChromeOS Flex to convert those legacy Windows devices into ChromeOS devices.

“ChromeOS Flex gave us the ability to transform our existing fleet of devices so that we could experience all of the benefits of the Google ecosystem without hardware restrictions,” said Ahlin. “ChromeOS Flex breathed new life into our old devices, helping bridge the gap as we transition to new Chromebooks over time.”

Today, 70% of Nordward’s devices are HP computers running ChromeOS Flex, with the remaining 30% consisting of Asus Chromebooks. Ahlin expects they will transition to 100% Chromebooks over the next two years.

Maintaining Access to Business-Critical Apps on ChromeOS

With its ChromeOS device strategy worked out, Ahlin’s next challenge was to ensure that all Nordward employees could continue to access the business-critical Windows applications that they need to do their jobs, even from Chrome devices.

“The most critical need was the ability to deliver our Windows-based ERP system, VismaBusiness, to all of our employees even though they are now utilizing ChromeOS devices,” said Ahlin. “This is the system we use for our purchasing, warehousing, logistics, sales, and finance – so I can’t think of anything more ‘business critical’ than that.”

Nordward selected Cameyo’s Digital Workspace, enabling them to simply and securely deliver their ERP software to all of their employees’ ChromeOS devices. Cameyo enables Nordward employees to access the full desktop version of the Windows application on their ChromeOS devices through the browser. Not only does this remove the need for the software to be installed and managed on each device, but because it’s the same version of the software that everyone is used to (just running in the browser), there is nothing new for users to learn.

“Cameyo played a critical role in enabling our transition to Chrome Enterprise,” said Ahlin. “Without the ability to provide access to our Windows ERP software on ChromeOS devices, we simply would not have been able to make the switch.”

Virtual Applications Instead of Virtual Desktops

When searching for the right solution to enable access to their ERP software on any device, Nordward originally began evaluating traditional virtual desktop products. After evaluating VMware Horizon and Citrix XenApp (Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops), it became clear that the complexity and cost of traditional Desktop as a Service (DaaS) and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) products were not going to be a fit for Nordward’s needs.

“To be honest, XenApp was so complex that we gave up after two weeks of trying to deploy it,” said Ahlin. “With Cameyo I was up and running in just one day. I took another day of testing to ensure everything worked perfectly before rolling it out to our users, so within two days I was able to deploy, test, and take the whole system live. That’s unheard of, especially when you think of the complexity organizations have traditionally had to deal with when enabling virtual access to applications. But with Cameyo, it’s like they’ve absorbed that complexity and taken it off of the user’s plate.”

The Results

Since transitioning to ChromeOS, Nordward has experienced the following benefits:

• Simple Scalability – “ChromeOS Flex made it simple to convert our Windows PCs to ChromeOS, making it easy to scale based on our existing devices. And with Cameyo, as quickly as I can hand someone a Chrome device, I can publish and provide them access to any Windows applications they still need to be productive.”
• Reduced Complexity – “Cameyo dramatically simplifies both the initial deployment and the ongoing management of delivering a secure Digital Workspace. With Cameyo, we experienced at least an 80% reduction in time required for installation and ongoing maintenance. And ChromeOS Flex enables us to manage, track, and organize our users and devices quickly and seamlessly.”
• Cost-Effectiveness – “ChromeOS Flex made it possible to transition to ChromeOS without having to invest a large amount upfront for new Chromebooks. And Cameyo brings dramatic cost savings compared to virtual desktop products based on the amount of time it saved us in deployment, time saved in ongoing management, and the fact that everything is included – we don’t need to tack on additional third-party tools.”
• User Experience – “With Cameyo, our employees get to access the same desktop version of the software that they’re used to with absolutely nothing new to learn, so it’s a seamless user experience. And ChromeOS Flex has enabled us to deliver persistent Chrome meetings in between various geographical locations and remote workers to help build a better workplace culture.”

“There’s also a significant sustainability benefit of this setup as well,” said Ahlin. “Nordward is deeply committed to sustainable business practices, and by transitioning to ChromeOS and Google Chrome we have the added benefit of utilizing Google’s green IT policies as well.”

The post Nordward Selects Cameyo and ChromeOS Flex to Transition to ChromeOS appeared first on Cameyo.

As if that wasn’t challenging enough, things were complicated by the fact that their licenses for the Desktop as a Service (DaaS) product they were using were expiring. 

“That actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise,” said John Cerio, Network Administrator at Baldwinsville Central School District. “We had been using VMware Horizon 7, and everything was incredibly difficult to manage already. Scaling that to meet our more widespread needs for distance learning would have been very challenging.”

The Challenge

Baldwinsville already had a 1:1 program, so every student has a Chromebook. But there are still a handful of applications that every student needs to utilize for their coursework – from Adobe’s Creative Suite to Microsoft Office and more – that they were not able to access on Chromebooks.

“We had hoped that VMware’s DaaS solution would solve that for us, but to be honest, it just never worked the way we needed it to,” said Jim Froio, LAN Support Technician at Baldwinsville Central School District. “For our students, the application performance was poor, which creates a frustrating user experience. And from an IT perspective, the complexity is just through the roof. So it wasn’t a good experience for anyone involved.”

“Ultimately, we realized that a virtual desktop approach simply wasn’t a good fit for us. We knew there had to be a simpler, more cost-effective alternative – so it was time to make a switch,” said Cerio.

The Solution

Cerio and Froio realized they had an opportunity to right-size their approach to desktop virtualization and instead focus on providing a seamless digital workspace that gave their students access to all of the apps they needed, on any device. Which is when they turned to Cameyo.

“Cameyo’s digital workspace solution enables us to give students access to the full desktop version of all the applications they need, on their Chromebooks, securely through the browser,” said Froio. “And Cameyo’s cloud-native approach dramatically simplified our environment both from a deployment and an ongoing management perspective.”

The Benefits

Right from the beginning, Baldwinsville began recognizing the benefits of Cameyo’s simple, secure, and cost-effective approach to delivering digital workspaces. Key benefits they’ve experienced thus far include:

• Reduced Cost – “In just the first year, and talking about licensing fees alone, Cameyo is saving us $50,000 compared to VMware,” said Cerio.

• User Experience – “Our students get to use the full desktop version of the software that they’re already used to, without having to learn anything new. It simply opens up in a browser tab instead of being locally installed on the device. And the application performance with Cameyo is nearly the same as if it were installed locally – it’s a fantastic user experience for our students,” said Cerio.

• Reduced Complexity & Management Time – “Cameyo has been a game-changer for me. It was incredibly easy to deploy and get up and running – a matter of days instead of the weeks it took to deploy our previous DaaS solution. And the ongoing management is so simple. With VMware, there were just so many pieces to manage. You had load balancers, gateways, license servers, and more – and that was all before you could even bring the first virtual machine online. With Cameyo, all of that complexity is gone,” said Froio.

• Security – “I can’t tell you how refreshing it is that Cameyo has multiple layers of security truly baked in at the foundation, as opposed to it being something extra we have to pay for. And the Cameyo Port Shield technology is amazing. It gives me peace of mind to know that all of our RDP ports are constantly protected in the background,” said Cerio.

ROI, and Then Some

Baldwinsville notes that saving $50,000 in the first year alone is just the beginning of the ROI they’ll see from Cameyo. 

“Another piece of the ROI equation is how Cameyo enables us to invest solely in Chromebooks moving forward, instead of also needing to purchase PCs so that students could also access the needed Windows apps,” said Cerio. “We added 1,400 Chromebooks this year as a result.”

“There’s also the time savings aspect to consider. Cameyo has reduced the amount of time required for ongoing management by at least 50% already compared to VMware,” said Froio. 

“And the amount of time spent managing infrastructure wasn’t just reduced, it was nearly eliminated,” said Cerio. “I spent at least 80 hours a year managing infrastructure with VMware. With Cameyo that has been reduced to almost nothing.”   

The Conclusion

“Cameyo not only saved us a ton of money compared to VMware, but it is incredibly easy to manage, and is more secure. This works better than anything we’ve ever had, and Cameyo is now going to play a key role in our long-term plans for moving everything to the cloud,” said Cerio.

“It’s also worth noting that Cameyo’s support team is top notch. Every step of the way, with any questions we had, the support team was right there to walk us through it. And they didn’t just try to quickly fix things so that they could close the ticket – they really took the time to make sure we were fully trained and understood how to configure everything ourselves. Our experience has been phenomenal,” said Froio.

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Three years ago, Tatico saw a trend that more organizations wanting to utilize their platform had users on a variety of platforms, especially Apple devices. At the time, it’s ERP suite ran only on Windows, and needed to be physically installed  – there was no web-enabled option.

“This became a serious limiting factor for us when speaking with potential customers,” said Henrique Netzka, CEO of Tatico. “We needed to be able to sell our platform to any company, regardless of the types of devices their employees used – not just Windows-only organizations. So we set out to web-enable our platform to better serve a greater number of organizations.”

Option 1 – Redevelop

Tatico initially looked into the possibility of completely re-developing their entire platform for the web so that customers could access the Tatico suite on any device, from the browser. After researching their options for redevelopment, Tatico came to the same conclusion as many independent software vendors (ISVs) faced with the same situation – the cost and time involved in redevelopment simply was not viable.

“It would have taken $2M to redevelop our suite for the web, and it would have taken at least 18 months,” said Netzka. “It simply didn’t make economic sense.”

In addition to the time and cost involved, Tatico was also concerned about ensuring feature parity for the web version.

“Often times with these redevelopment projects, companies are forced to make compromises in the functionality of the web version in order to get it to market faster,” said Netzka. “We are not wiling to compromise the user experience of our customers, so it was very important to us that they be able to access 100% of the features and functionality of the suite, from the web.”

Option 2 – Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

With redevelopment off the table, Tatico began looking into ways to provide their customers and prospects with access to the Tatico suite via traditional virtualization desktop infrastructure (VDI) tools. Ultimately, Tatico decided to roll out access to their suite via Citrix.

“Citrix was our main choice, but it ended up not working out at all,” said Netzka.

The three issues Tatico ran into with Citrix were:

• User Experience – “Citrix did not provide a good environment for our users. People were frustrated with the degraded experience.”
• Complexity – “Citrix was very complicated to deploy and manage. And even once it was deployed, it was very heavy on our server side, and also really heavy on our users’ devices.”
• Cost – “There are costs involved in all of the setup and deployment time, as well as all of the time we spent managing and maintaining Citrix. But there are also more straightforward hard costs. We spent a ton of money virtualizing servers on our side.”

The Resolution

Ultimately Tatico decided it needed to take a different approach and replaced Citrix with Cameyo’s Digital Workspace solution. With Cameyo, Tatico was able to quickly and easily give all of their current and future customers access to the full desktop version of the Tatico suite, from any type of device, directly from the browser.

“When we first saw Cameyo in action, we quickly realized that our users wouldn’t have to download, install, or manage anything in order to use our suite,” said Netzka. “It was like a dream come true. Our users would get the same exact experience as the installed version of the software, but on any device, without having to install anything.”

Netzka notes three key benefits Tatico has experienced with Cameyo:

• Ease of Use – “With Cameyo, our users don’t have to do anything. There’s nothing to install on their employees’ devices and there’s nothing to manage. It couldn’t be simpler, and for three years now Cameyo has provided an amazing experience for our users.”
• Control – “Cameyo gives us 100% control of the environment. We no longer have to worry about whether or not a customer has Windows, or if they have an old version of Windows. With Cameyo, we’ve removed the user’s OS from the equation. And making product updates has become a breeze. We can simply update the application on Cameyo and all of our web-based users instantly have access to the latest version.”
• Accessibility – “Almost overnight, Cameyo made Tatico available to users on tablets, Chromebooks, Apple devices – anything!” 

By making the Tatico ERP suite available to all users on any device with zero redevelopment, the Cameyo platform has helped to fundamentally change Tatico’s business model.

“We simply would not have been able to sell to organizations with Apple or Chromebook users. Cameyo has helped unlock a whole new addressable market for the Tatico ERP suite,” said Netzka.  

The post Tático ERP Replaces Citrix with Cameyo to Provide Customers with Install-Free Cloud Access appeared first on Cameyo.

Throughout those 30 years, ClienTrax has been available only as a PC or Mac application. But as more solutions moved to a Software as a Service (SaaS) model, ClienTrax recognized that it needed to provide a web-based version of its platform as well.

The Competitive Edge

“The simple reality is that in most sales conversations these days, the first question from customers is ‘do you have a web-based solution?’ – and if you can’t answer yes to that, your solution will not be considered. Without a SaaS offering, you’re just out of the deal,” said Craig Markus, Director of Operations, ClienTrax. “In order to continue to compete, we knew we needed to redevelop our application for the web.”

However, ClienTrax quickly realized that redevelopment is not an easy path. ClienTrax is an in-depth solution that has grown and evolved constantly over 30 years to meet the specific, changing needs of the veterinary industry.

“We figure it will take as much as 4 years for us to completely re-write the app for the web before we can deliver this as a true SaaS offering,” said Markus. “In the meantime, we needed a way to provide our customers with web-based access to the app today so that we could maintain our competitive edge.”

Going SaaS with Zero Redevelopment

ClienTrax began searching for a solution that would enable customers to access the full desktop version of their application via the web today. It initially looked at remote desktop products like Parallels and Remote App, but determined the economics would not work for their business.

“The more we evaluated, the more we realized that the cost and complexity of Parallels and other remote desktop apps simply wasn’t feasible,” said Markus.

Then, Markus discovered Cameyo.

“Within hours of evaluating Cameyo, I saw how easy it was to offer our existing software as a web-enabled application with Cameyo’s virtual application delivery platform,” said Markus. “The best part is, Cameyo requires absolutely zero application redevelopment on our end.”

The Same Experience, Available Anywhere and On Any Device

Being able to provide existing and potential customers with a SaaS version of their application was critical, but ClienTrax also understood that they needed the web-enabled version to have the same functionality as the software version.

“Even though customers now prioritize the ability to access their solutions via the web, that doesn’t mean they’re willing to accept a deprecated version that’s lacking critical functionality,” said Markus. “With Cameyo, we’re able to give customers access to the full desktop version of our software with 100 percent of the functionality – they simply access the application via the browser instead of having the software installed locally. Existing customers get the same exact experience they’ve always had with nothing new to learn, and new customers don’t have to worry about getting a different experience than desktop users.”

Security Meets Simplicity

Considering the sensitivity of the information that its veterinary customers deal with, security is always top of mind when it comes to any solution being considered. ClienTrax needed a solution that could deliver its application to any device via the browser while separating the app from the OS and ensuring all information was secure.

“Cameyo is the most secure approach I’ve experienced for virtual application delivery,” said Markus. “Our customers have access to the application, but they don’t have access to the servers. Cameyo runs in HTTPS, everything is encrypted, and it ensures that everything the user works on in the application is separate from the device. So even if the device they are working from has a vulnerability, the information they utilize within the web-based version of ClienTrax is kept separate and cannot be accessed by the device.”

“And better yet, Cameyo simplifies the entire process,” said Markus. “I don’t have to worry about setting up new servers or constantly maintaining all of the servers – the Cameyo platform dynamically handles all of that in the background.”

Conclusion

“When looking at competing solutions, the cost and complexity alone were non-starters for us,” said Markus. “Cameyo not only eliminates the cost & complexity, but it is also incredibly simple to use – both on our end and for our customers. There’s simply no more secure, cost-effective, and simple way to deliver any app to any device from the web.”

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