Case studies
Morris+Company
Customer: Morris+Company
www.morrisand.company
Offices: London and Copenhagen
Inevidesk adoption: September 2024
“I would strongly recommend Inevidesk to any other organisation with an interest in improving their sustainability and evolving their operational and digital capabilities.”
Morris+Company is an architectural practice deeply committed to innovation and sustainability, critical aspects that flow through its design work, operations and wider social commitments. These principles extend to the team’s approach to technology and were fundamental in their decision to adopt Inevidesk. As Associate Director + Head of Digital Matteo Orsi explains:
“Aligning our technical infrastructure with the principles that we apply to our design work has long been a key goal for us. We believe that sustainability is much more than a check box or virtue signal and should be expressed in every aspect of how we operate. With that in mind we engaged early with available technologies and identified VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) as the best means to achieve our aim. With a few years now of experience across different VDI solutions, it’s clear to us that Inevidesk is the best fit for our practice.”
A carbon impact report prepared by a leading sustainability consultant in 2024 calculated that an Inevidesk vdesk has 62% less carbon impact compared to a traditional physical workstation of a similar specification.
Although sustainability was a key driver for the decision, the practice also had to factor in other important operational factors, most significantly the need to support a team split between London and Copenhagen offices, a hybrid working policy and the exacting demands of a team requiring reliable and high performing workstations for an ever evolving digital workload.
“Getting the balance right between sustainability, performance and flexibility is not as easy as you might think”, says Matteo. “Thankfully, this is something that the team at Inevidesk have put a lot of thought into and designed their solution to effectively serve all of our key requirements. The fact that they have extensive experience in the AEC sector gives us huge confidence and we can see that reflected in the wider adoption of the service by our friends and peers.
“Since migrating to the platform we have been impressed with the performance quality of the virtual desktops which utilise the high end processors and GPUs that our software demands. We are now able to work much more confidently and effectively wherever we might be based on any particular day, at the office, home or elsewhere.”
Morris+Company is now fully situated in Inevidesk’s hosted environment and utilises our IaaS (infrastructure as a Service) for all server based systems, taking advantage of our high levels of security, environmental management and resiliency.
“After a few years of hosting within a large public cloud provider we were keen to ‘re-shore’ our data closer to home to allay concerns of security, privacy and creeping costs. Inevidesk’s private cloud gives us the control we need whilst still allowing us to benefit from cloud levels of resiliency and access.”
Matteo concludes: “It feels very good to finally have a partner that we feel understands our goals and effectively supports our work. I would strongly recommend Inevidesk to any other organisation with an interest in improving their sustainability and evolving their operational and digital capabilities.”
Hopkins Architects
Customer: Hopkins Architects
www.hopkins.co.uk
Offices: London and Dubai
Inevidesk adoption: March 2020
“Inevidesk, who not only offered an industry bespoke, high performance service, but also one which would be simple to adopt and sensibly priced.”
In March 2020, as lockdown came into force, Hopkins Architects became the first company to invest in Inevidesk, although their interest predated this having formed part of our early testing cohort as the initial service was developed. As Director, Thomas Corrie states:
“In mid-2019, we seriously started looking into a suitable VDI solution that could handle our increasingly complex BIM workload and allow our teams to collaborate better from multiple locations. Virtual technology felt like the right approach as it would give us the performance and flexibility we wanted, but also allow us to keep our data and resources centralised and secure. However, most services on offer were overly complex and expensive. Then we were introduced to Inevidesk, who not only offered an industry bespoke, high performance service, but also one which would be simple to adopt and sensibly priced.”
Hopkins purchased three pods initially, then a further five that calendar year, incorporating the hardware into their on premises infrastructure, utilising the vdesks to support remote UK workers:
“We have been able to incorporate team members based in the Middle East into teams located in London without the need to sync data or maintain duplicate systems. In this way we have also identified cost and operational benefits of reducing satellite office equipment and the potential of making better use of our main office space.
“One of the key improvements has been in IT administration. We can now deploy new machines in minutes rather than hours and better ensure standardisation of software. In respect of both time and security, these are big and easy wins and much appreciated by our IT department and project teams alike.’’
The practice continued the adoption of virtual desktops in 2021, incrementally replacing physical workstations, making the decision to move to a fully virtualised and hosted infrastructure before the end of the year.
This decision allowed them to free up valuable office space by decommissioning the on premises server room and significantly improve their business resiliency with the support of Inevidesk’s hosted services which are supported by high levels of physical security, environmental management and dual and diverse power and connectivity.
With nearly 150 vdesks supporting work in BIM, GPU and CPU rendering, Hopkins have been able to effectively support their team’s workload wherever they are based and better manage their resources.
Over four years later Hopkins continues to plan its technical strategy around the Inevidesk platform.
“There is a lot of interest in public cloud VDI but we are happier with the Inevidesk model where everything is simpler and predictable”.
Read the original articles:
https://www.inevidesk.uk/blog/hopkins-architects-one-year-on
https://www.inevidesk.uk/blog/hopkins-architects-four-years-on
Aros Architects
Customer: Aros Architects
www.arosarchitects.com
Offices: London
Inevidesk adoption: November 2021
“Inevidesk gives us the ability to scale easily and quickly when we need to, without the concern for on-site spatial or environmental constraints.”
Aros Architects first spoke to Inevidesk as they considered new strategies in light of a need to replace ageing server infrastructure and address collaborative issues that had been highlighted by new hybrid working practices. As Director Mark Limbrick explains:
“The studio is a very important place for Aros, for the collaboration of our teams and sharing of ideas but we’re also really passionate about giving employees a good work/life balance and that means empowering them to work effectively from home or the studio whichever is best for the task in hand. With our server reaching capacity and packing up, we knew we needed to pursue a different IT set up. We were first recommended Inevidesk from contacts at Hutchinson & Partners and we contacted friends at GRID Architects to see their operation, who shared very positive reviews of the virtual desktops.”
With such resounding testimonials from existing Inevidesk clients, Aros made the decision to move immediately onto the Inevidesk fully hosted service, incorporating four Revit capable ‘pods’ (28 vdesks) to support the current team and anticipated growth. Lifting critical business infrastructure out of the office space, which being an old Victorian building was an inappropriate environment for IT equipment, addressed risks of downtime and freed up space for better usage and potential sub-letting. The practice now operates a full time hotdesking policy within the office so staff can locate to wherever is most appropriate on any given day.
``Inevidesk gives us the ability to scale easily and quickly when we need to, without the concern for on-site spatial or environmental constraints.”
Adopting Inevidesk has allowed Aros to remain in their well-loved home, work more efficiently and save money. And as they have grown they have been able to scale easily and are now running 49 hosted virtual desktops.
“Buy it. Just do it. Inevidesk is excellent and has significantly improved our flexibility and the experience of our team members whether they’re working remotely or in the office. There is no question that it has brought tangible benefits to the company over the past two years.”
Read the article:
https://www.inevidesk.uk/blog/aros-architects-upgrades-tech-infrastructure-with-inevidesk
VIA
Customer: VIA
https://www.via.inc/
Offices: London and Hong Kong
Inevidesk adoption: June 2023
“Inevidesk … beats any other solution out there.’’
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."
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.’’