Server and Desktop Virtualization Support Services

Implementing virtual infrastructures is a now well established answer to mitigating costs, optimising efficiencies and rationalising the IT environment.

More than just a concept – it is a business strategy that provides tangible value for companies in any industry. Virtualization provides added agility, availability, and scalability as your organisation strives to make IT a strategic asset, by radically improving the efficiency and availability of resources and applications in use.

We Offer Solutions in the Areas Of:

• Server and Data Centre Virtualization
• Storage Virtualization
• Desktop Virtualization
• Virtualization Networking
• Application Virtualization

Reasons to Virtualise

• Are you planning to deploy new servers or applications, but are constrained on budget or space?
• Is becoming environmentally friendly part of your business objective?
• Is your business expecting an increase in service levels and availability expectation without a comparable budget?
• Is server maintenance downtime a disruption to service or a drain on resources costs?
• Do you spend a lot of time deploying software?
• Are server backups a difficult and time consuming problem?
• Is desktop hardware and software provisioning, upgrading and management expensive and time consuming?
• Is data, application security and availability a significant concern?
• Is it challenging and expensive to support desktop users in remote offices?
• Do you have transactional or remote workers requiring secure access to the corporate network?

Virtualization Addresses Many of the Above Challenges By…

• Improving Data centre costs whilst maintaining and even increasing availability and levels of service
• Reducing the cost and complexity of disaster recovery and business continuity
• Getting more out of existing IT staff by automating tasks and increasing their admin to server ratio
• Securing PCs, workstations and laptops without compromising the end user experience
• Addressing application conflict issues through the deployment of application Virtualization
• Providing greater flexibility and choice, while maintaining compliance with corporate policies
• Allowing end users to have access to their familiar personalised desktops and running the same applications, mitigating the need for user retraining.

Process

Allied follows strict processes and sound project management practices to ensure smooth implementation and roll out. We follow a tried and tested 5 stage approach as follows:

• Due diligence – Detailed discovery phase of the entire infrastructure to capture information such as current infrastructure, configuration, licensing and version control.
• Capacity planning – We determine which servers are potential candidates for Virtualization by assessing current processor, memory and storage utilisation.
• Design solution:
  • High Level design – A conceptual overview of how the new virtualised infrastructure will be implemented.
  • Detailed design – A document containing in-depth technical configuration information
• Testing & implementation – Carry out a proof of concept of the agreed detailed design solution. Only upon completion of testing is full implementation deployed.
• Handover and knowledge transfer – The detailed design document and infrastructure management documents are completed. Allied will then handover all relevant information and cross train your internal staff on the administration and use of management tools.

We Can Supply the Following:

• Senior consultants with extensive experience in virtualization
• Expertise to plan and deploy a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution
• Access to Allied’s well equipped Network Monitoring Centre
• 24×7 Helpdesk with L1 to L4 skills
• Robust infrastructure and processes in place
• Knowledge sharing, documentation and training
• Account Management and reporting
• ITIL and ITSM
• Cisco, Citrix and VMware certified professionals
• Resource methodology – access to technical expertise and knowledge transfer, in all scenarios from in-sourcing and co-sourcing through to full outsourcing
• Managed resources for short term needs, experience in managing TUPE
• Distributed Support in the UK, across EMEA or even globally – full or part time and multi lingual capabilities