Collaboration with offshore partners
Talent does not know geographical boundaries. This is especially true for the IT industry as you may find experts that you need in any corner of the globe. Offshore partners give organizations the flexibility to reduce their manpower needs while ensuring that their product or service deadlines are met without compromise.
Offshore partners offer companies the power of choice, a large talent pool and specialized services that the company itself might not be able to afford in large numbers. This works especially well for short-term projects, where hiring individuals makes no sense for an organization for a task that might never need to be done again.
Data security is extremely critical for all organizations. With offshore partners often needing access to your systems and networks for tasks and data, maintaining the security and integrity of your corporate data is of the utmost importance. At orquidea, our consultants are frequently contracted for jobs both large and small by organizations around the world. Our consultants have also helped companies around the world to successfully work with offshore partners without compromising on security and data integrity.
Maintaining data integrity and security
Virtualization helps organizations work with offshore partners with ease while ensuring data security and integrity. Virtual servers and terminal servers allow offshore partner employees to work on a controlled environment of your choice, without complications.
Flexibility with hardware and software configurations
Virtualization also allows your partners to use their own hardware, without having to bother about configuration, licensing, software installations, updates, backups and other regular IT tasks.
Data access and control
Your data does not leave your company at any time. Virtual servers are completely in your control and secured so that you can rest assured that your data is not compromised. As virtual servers are in a secure location and managed by your own IT staff, allowing or removing access to offshore partners is a simple task that can be accomplished in seconds.
Whether your partners are offshore or in the next building, exposing your network and data to them can have serious ramifications. Virtualization helps organizations work with offshore partners without having to compromise their networks or data at any given point of time.
Consultants at orquidea have the experience and the technical acumen to help you work with the best talent in the world without compromise. Schedule a consultation with us to see how we can help you be a truly global company today.
BOYD-COPE
The freedom of choice – now in devices
Organizations and employees have had a common point of contention for years – hardware. While organizations believe that hardware should be optimal for work, employees would prefer a device of their choice that allowed them to enhance their productivity while working. Allowing employees to bring in their devices has some inherent problems. Incompatible software or hardware, problems with licensing, exposure to malware, ransomware, viruses and the issue of access to corporate data have deterred organizations from allowing employees to use their own devices.
The concepts of BYOD – or Bring your own device and COPE – or Corporate-owned, privately enabled strives to address these specific situations. Leveraging the power of virtualization to provide highly secure, managed access to data and software lets employers rest assured about the sanctity of data. Employees feel empowered as they can bring in the devices they prefer, using the power of virtualization to work on the software and environment their employers want, on a device of their own choice.
At orquidea, we believe in the power of choice. Our consultants carry the devices they believe can best suit their requirements, helping them perform optimally. Coupled with the power of virtualization they are empowered with their favourite hardware and the software that they need to succeed.
BYOD and COPE help organizations in many ways. These include:
- No reliance on corporate hardware
Both employees and organizations can bring in their own device, work, and go home. This is especially beneficial for outsourced managed workplaces and home offices where employees bring in their portable devices to an office location that is outsourced or work from home using their own device, in a software environment customized for them by their organization.
- Employees are empowered to perform
As employees switch to machines they prefer, they perform better. The virtualized environment they get helps them use the software they need to succeed.
- Virtualization for security
With the power of virtualization on your side, your employees can perform optimally without being concerned about the underlying hardware of their device.
- Simple onboarding and offboarding policies
Virtualization makes employee onboarding and offboarding just a simple matter of revoking access.
With these benefits and many, many more, BYOD and COPE have become the new normal for many companies around the globe. These benefit startups as they can allow employees to bring in their own machines while ensuring total security for their intellectual property and client data.
If your organization is planning to shift to BYOD or COPE, orquidea has the experience and the technical acumen your company needs to reap the benefits of virtualization, BYOD and COPE.
carve-outs
Simplifying carve-outs – without the caveats
Organizations sometimes opt for a cross-functional separation of business units called a carve out. A carve-out will always have a significant impact on the IT services of the parent company and the carved-out entity, as resources will almost always be shared between them. No matter what the IT-carve-out strategy your company may use, the interim IT infrastructure and data infrastructure will require data and resource sharing between the two entities.
At orquidea, our consultants specialize in ensuring seamless resource sharing between carved-out and parent entities. As an example, company A decides to carve out their business intelligence division. When they find a partner that wishes to acquire their business intelligence division, both parties must perform a criticality assessment of data and services, which are typically shared with the parent and the carved-out entity.
Shareable data infrastructure can include:
- Organizational Data
- Anti-trust Data
- Third Party data
Shareable services for the companies can include:
- IT Infrastructure
- Hardware and warranty contracts
- Software
- Connectivity
- Access control
For both companies to run seamlessly during the transition period, the interim IT carve-out team must provide access to data and services of company A to company B. However, sharing data with a now third party might be problematic for the parent organization.
Virtualization has had the answer for many problems of scale and complexity that companies may face during a carve-out. Virtualization allows the parent company to provide access to systems and software, without exposing their own networks and hardware to the newly created entity. The new entity can work on their own hardware and networks, while still sharing data and IT services from the parent organization A.
Consultants at orquidea have helped many companies successfully manage IT in the parts of their business that they have carved out. With their expertise seamless virtualization implementations, orquidea is the right partner for your carve-out needs.
Highly Secure
Highly Secure Environments – without the complexity
Organizations large and small may have work environments that must be secured at all costs. These secured work environments protect your company’s applications and critical data. If these applications or data sets are compromised due to intrusions, ransomware or malware, there could be severe repercussions for the company. Compromised data could be accessed, stolen, changed or destroyed by malicious entities.
A very recent incident where a highly secure environment was severely impacted by ransomware is of Garmin. Affecting casual workouts, flight schools, and even the update of aeronautical databases, this ransomware attack cost Garmin millions of dollars.
At orquidea, we believe that attack-readiness and preemptive action is much more beneficial when compared to patching. As individuals in companies log in to highly secure environments with their PCs, they open dozens of backdoors through which malware, ransomware and other intrusions may cause damages. (such as those seen at Garmin.)
Virtualization and terminal servers hold the key to prevent or reduce the incidents of attacks on secure environments. Using virtual apps and desktops in a secure environment has several distinct advantages
- Security
Virtualization is secure by design. All computations occur on the server and clients connect to a virtualized desktop, eliminating chances of data being impacted.
- Highly acceptable
As virtual desktops can be used from any machine, employees readily accept them as their standard way of working.
- Easy to control
Virtual servers are controlled, secured and administered centrally. Providing and revoking access to clients is as simple and takes seconds.
- Unrestrictive for end devices
With virtually no restriction on client machines, virtualized environments are easy-to-use and quickly adopted by clients.
- Low-cost
As terminal and virtual servers can leverage the existing hardware in the organization, clients do not need special hardware or software to access the system, reducing costs to the company dramatically.
Highly secure environments are serious business. Ignoring the security of these areas can cause widespread data loss leading to financial repercussions and damage your brand identity.
Consultants at orquidea are well-versed with the nuances of highly secure environments and can help your organization in securing and managing them better. Schedule a call with us today if your organization wishes to leverage the power of virtualization to secure environments today.
Home Offices
the workplaces of the future
The world of today is a better-connected place than ever before. With cafés, living rooms and co-working spaces becoming the offices of the modern age, corporate offices have become irrelevant, and in many cases – outdated. Today, every company needs to rethink the way they work and do business.
For many mature organizations, a home office was an anomaly—something that was reserved for those unable to commute to work due to personal or geographical constraints. The advent of home-grown startups and a workforce that wishes to work on their terms have left organizations with only one choice—to adapt to the new normal and switch to a home office.
At orquidea, a home office has always been the preferred option for many of our consultants. Working at client locations around the world, home or mobile offices have empowered them to ensure that they can have the freedom to work when they want, where they want.
The advent of virtualization has empowered home offices like never before. Allowing secure, unhindered access to workplaces from virtually anywhere, on any platform, a home office is as well-equipped as your own office space. There are numerous advantages to virtualization-powered home offices. These include:
- Enhanced productivity
As employees are in their homes, they feel free to work when needed, greatly enhancing their productivity. The ability to work at home also allows them the additional benefit of being with their loved ones and being able to manage a work-life balance better.
- Lowered costs
As employees can connect to their virtual desktop in the office with just an internet connection, they do not need access to expensive hardware to work. Virtualization helps employees use the option they have at home to work effectively and efficiently. Organizations also save by reducing office space and employee benefit costs at the workplace.
- Low bandwidth requirements
With virtual servers nearly eliminating all bandwidth-hogging software from your device, you can work with a basic broadband connection without any problems.
- Low commute costs and environmentally-friendly
With a home office, employees do not need to commute to their office every day. This helps them to reduce expenditure on travel and helps to conserve the environment at the same time!
- Data security
Virtualization has helped home offices to become as safe, secure and powerful as actual office spaces. With highly reduced dependence on hardware and a completely secure environment provided by virtualization platforms, home offices keep client and organizational data secure at all times.
Organizations the world over have begun the switch to a home-office environment for workers that do not need to be at the workplace. Working from home has the additional advantage for organizations by reducing monthly office expenditure thereby freeing up capital for growth.
If your organization is planning to make the switch to a home office, there is no better partner than orquidea to help you make this change with confidence. Our expert consultants have years of experience helping companies set up home offices and can quickly help you get up and running. Contact us today to see how we can help you embrace the change with confidence.
Mergers and Acquisitions
two hearts that beat as one
When companies merge or get acquired, a major hassle for all of these companies is the integration of their IT systems or the adoption of the parent company’s systems and networks. IT services in both merged and acquired companies end up spending a considerable amount of time and resources aligning their IT infrastructure and services with each other.
At orquidea, we believe in solving these problems with intelligent solutions. Virtualization offers the control, flexibility and capability that is needed by IT teams to ensure a near-seamless migration and minimal impact to existing users. As virtualization setups can be scaled at the server level, there is not much that needs to be done at the client end as they log in to a virtual instance of their new parent company’s environment.
The very nature of virtualized systems makes them the perfect solution for merged or acquired companies. With complete protection of data, resources and management of licenses at the server level, virtualization is the perfect answer to the problems faced by newly merged or acquired companies.
Virtualization can solve many problems for newly merged or acquired entities, including:
- Security
All security concerns are addressed at the server level, as the server is at a secure location, with no interference from the new users that log in to the company network.
- Licensing and updates
Licensing is managed centrally on a virtual server, eliminating the need to perform any tasks at the client end. All updates are made to the server, ensuring that clients get the very latest version of the software that they need.
- Working environment
Setting up a working environment is a breeze in virtualized environments. As IT policy can determine access and licenses at the policy level, users just need to log in, and start working.
- Time
The biggest concern for companies that have merged or been acquired is the amount of time they spend trying to get everyone up and running. Virtualization solves the problem of time by enabling all new employees to log in to a pre-set, pre-configured environment where they can just log in and start working, saving time, effort, and resources.
- Hardware
Virtualization eliminates the need for expensive hardware changes. With a virtual server, clients on any operating system can log onto a virtualized desktop without requiring to modify their existing hardware, software or services.
For years, consultants at orquidea have helped major enterprises successfully merge or acquire other entities without having to deal with the hassles of hardware, software, policy and license management. Virtualized environments are the key to a successful, trouble-free transition of employees from one company to the other. If you are planning to acquire or merge with another entity, contact orquidea to help you make this transition seamless and trouble-free.
Server based
computing
The IT industry has seen more changes than any other in the last few decades. Computers became small enough to be carried around – compared to the multiple rooms they occupied not many years ago. With a strong emphasis on minimization and portability, computing has moved from rooms to tables to laps to our hands.
As hand-held devices have become nearly as powerful as computers, organizations have started to switch from workstations to desktops to handhelds. For many organizations, using these devices to actively connect to their network and accessing data is a security risk they cannot afford. The answer to this problem lies in server-based computing.
At orquidea, we believe that employee empowerment should not come at the cost of exposing your organization to threats and malware. Our world-class consultants have spent years helping organizations set up server-based computing solutions to enhance employee productivity, reduce incidences of intrusions and malware, and manage licenses effectively.
Server-based computing has many distinct advantages that have helped organizations the world over to manage their hardware and software resources better. These advantages include:
- Enhanced security
Terminal servers ensure that intrusions and malware do not creep in from thin clients. This significantly reduces the amount of malware and intrusions compared to regular workstations.
- Reduced expenditure on hardware
As thin clients cost less than traditional desktops, organizations can save on hardware costs, while investing the same in improving their terminal server capabilities, enhancing the user experience.
- Better license and software management
As most of the software used by the organization is served via a terminal server, licenses can be managed by policy, ensuring that IT teams spend less time on user software installation calls. This also allows your IT team to push the latest version of the software to your employees without having to spend time on installations at each machine.
- Reduced uptime for new employees
New employees can now get online in seconds, as all they need to do is log in to their new thin client. With all the software pre-installed, they are good to go immediately.
Server-based computing has become the norm in most large organizations that have sensitive customer data. This helps these organizations to ensure that all computational tasks are accomplished on a terminal server. As the terminal server is at a secure location, all aspects of intrusion detection, malware protection and licensing can be managed at one location. This reduces the workload on IT teams and greatly enhances the security of organizational data.
Contact the experienced consultants at orquidea to know how your organization can leverage the power server-based computing to improve data security and enhance the productivity of employees.