Inevidesk VIA the UK and Hong Kong

Assembly model created on a vdesk by VIA

VIA is an international design engineering and technical consultancy for architectural enclosure systems and materials. Founded in 2004 in the US, the company has recently headquartered in London and now has offices in Hong Kong, Seoul and San Francisco.

The global realignment necessitated that completely new infrastructure and services be provisioned to support the company’s international and agile needs, whilst enabling the ability to scale quickly with demand. 

VIA employed long term Inevidesk partners, Logicle IT, to oversee their technical strategy and quickly agreed on the use of the Inevidesk platform as their core technology. This decision was strongly influenced by the successful deployment of the service for other Logicle clients and through VIA Director Evan Levelle’s experience of the virtual desktops during an initial free trial period.

``Although VIA as an entity has existed for some time, the decision to headquarter in London meant we required a completely fresh infrastructure and a new strategy that would support our ambitious global requirements. We wanted the agility to work from anywhere, without the hindrance of installing and managing office based infrastructure. As I had experienced first hand the incredible performance of the Inevidesk virtual desktops, I was confident that this solution would meet our needs.’’

An inaugural Inevidesk pod was commissioned in June 2023 to support the UK-based team, hosted in Inevidesk’s datacentre alongside a highly resilient virtual infrastructure for data storage and server based services.

Evan continues: ``This was a painless deployment where we very quickly had access to an exceptionally high performing system and could hit the ground running. The Inevidesk and Logicle teams work fast and effectively and their deep understanding of the design and construction sector ensured we felt in safe hands throughout.’’

VIA also had offices in Hong Kong and South Korea with ageing servers and desktops. The success of the Inevidesk deployment in the UK made it an obvious strategy for centralising the VIA infrastructure in Asia. This strategy and installation was overseen by Logicle IT. Stuart Gateson, Director, explains:

"We already knew through the use of other clients that the Inevidesk virtual desktops, especially when used in conjunction with the Parsec remote connection software, could provide great responsive performance even over great distances. For example, we had a client from the Middle East using London-based infrastructure successfully. Connectivity between London and Hong Kong however carries an inherent minimum latency of around 210ms, which should make working on virtual desktops almost impossible. In actual fact, it worked pretty well! But we ultimately decided that - to ensure the best possible performance - a local Inevidesk instance would be more sensible."

Inevidesk pods in VIA’s HK datacentre

Logicle deployed a solution that synchronised file server data between London and Hong Kong using Panzura and accessed by local Inevidesk virtual desktops that would serve both the European and Asian territories. Stuart and his team flew out to Hong Kong to undertake the installation themselves to ensure cross-continent standards and that the system met VIA’s very specific needs.

``It’s been a resounding success,’’ states Evan. ``We have well connected, internationally dispersed teams, all working on the same system, with the same standards and able to respond to changing circumstances with ease and agility. It’s lightweight, yet robust. Dependable, yet flexible. We have also supplemented our UK system with Flexidesks to accommodate new team members and staff temporarily visiting from other territories; a relatively new aspect of the service that makes Inevidesk all the more responsive to our quickly changing needs. We plan to expand in a similar way in the US and potentially other regions as we win more projects. Inevidesk makes this operationally and financially efficient and frankly, beats any other solution out there.’’