Price, performance and so much more

We were very happy to get a mention in a leading industry magazine’s recent annual workstation supplement, named as one of the leading VDI suppliers in the UK. Not bad considering we launched Inevidesk less than three years ago. 

The specific element of our service mentioned was that we ‘go hard on price.’ And we do. One of the principal drivers for developing the service was to ensure it was accessible to everyone. As noted in the magazine, VDI has proved too expensive for many organisations to adopt in the past. We wanted to change that, as we knew the potential benefits were huge. 

As you get to know us better, you’ll see how we’re so much more than just price. We’ve built Inevidesk to address pain points across performance, complexity and connection so that our clients win across all three critical elements. Here’s how…  

Performance 

Our vdesks use Threadripper Pro CPUs to ensure high clock speeds and we see, on average, less than 50% of the overall CPU in our pods in use at any time: shared processing power is not proving to be a bottleneck. And all of our vdesks have dedicated GPUs, to ensure that our users always have the graphical resources available for their work. The relatively low level T1000 adequately supports day to day Revit usage (and similar) and our high spec vdesks run with a RTX A4000 to powerfully support more demanding software, such as Enscape. We also offer a visualiser level option with dedicated CPUs and the option for even more powerful GPUs.  

Complexity 

It's also simple to adopt and administrate Inevidesk. The service can be adopted by the ‘pod’ and added to incrementally over time, located on premises or on our hosting platform. Our administration portal makes creation, deployment, user and vdesk management a dream (two minutes to deploy a new machine anyone?). 

Connection 

Initially we integrated desktop streaming into our client application, using the Parsec service as we found this to be the best technology available for low latency streaming of complex design data, such as the navigation of 3D models. And it remains the world leading option for remote connectivity, evidenced by our clients who use it to connect in people from Europe, North America, the Middle East and even – temporarily – Australia (which, with 200ms of inherent latency really shouldn’t be feasible at all). 

We still partner with Parsec, though we have now split that element from our base service to give our clients more choice. We came across organisations who preferred RDP or Splashtop for example, for price or continuity of usage. Likewise, you could use something like HP Anyware if you wish, which is the closest currently available performance-wise to Parsec (and is not tied to HP hardware). 

Vs Physical Rackmounts 

Much was made in the issue on the attraction of using rack mounted physical workstations for less cost, better performance and simpler management. 

But – even in their small form factors – physical workstations take up a lot more room than VDI of any stripe. This undermines the cost argument immediately, especially if you plan to host in a datacentre. 

We recently published an infographic comparing density of the HP options to Inevidesk and the difference is clear: we can fit 2 – 3 times more desktops into a full-size rack, which has a huge space and cost implications. Lenovo’s machines are even bigger and so there is little to no chance any organisation would deploy these for a wider workforce. 

Our VDI solution also uses much less power than physical workstations, which again has important cost implications, but also critical implications for sustainability. 

Any organisation should be actively looking to reduce their carbon footprint and therefore – so long as performance and price are not prohibitive – this should be a key factor in decision making. 

Vs Dynamic VDI 

The magazine also undertook an exhaustive benchmarking of dynamic virtual workstations on the Azure, AWS and Google platforms. ‘Dynamic’ since these platforms can scale your resource at any point (Inevidesk is ‘Dedicated’ resource – much like a physical workstation would be). 

The same issues apply to dynamic virtual desktops as to traditional big tech VDI – except it’s even more expensive! (You have to pay for that dynamism I’m afraid …) And in speaking with many AEC companies over the past few years who have dipped their toes into such services, this effectively becomes uncontrolled cost very quickly. The ability to scale does not outweigh the expense. 

We’re actually looking at the potential to introduce a more scalable element to our hosted service next year (more on that to come…). This has become possible for us with the recent changes in Microsoft virtualisation access licensing. So as well as addressing all other problematic elements of VDI, we’re also going to tackle scalability too. 

In conclusion 

Our approach has always been informed by what our prospective clients will need, how they work and how they budget. We know this in detail because we have been providing technical services to the sector for decades. We have very deliberately addressed issues of price, performance, complexity, choice and developmental focus to meet very specific needs with our Inevidesk service. 

And that approach is being welcomed by the sector. It’s why we now have an increasing number of companies adopting our service, including a good number of the big named UK architects (Allies, HLM, Hopkins, Hawkins/Brown, Weston Williamson) as well as mid-sized practices and even start-ups (accessibility – see?). 

That is why Inevidesk stands apart. It’s a new standard for VDI and industry infrastructure. Don’t judge us on preconceptions. 

Talk to us. Talk to our clients. 

Try Inevidesk out. 

And see for yourselves.