New tools to help IT empower employees in a remote work world

With the global pandemic, customers are relying on remote work more than ever, and Windows Virtual Desktop is helping customers rapidly deliver a secure Windows 10 desktop experience to their users. Windows Virtual Desktop is absolutely essential for businesses in terms of their response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and as many have faced a continuity issue unparalleled in recent times it is crucial to respond very quickly to the new demands arising.  

To do that, we need to provide as close to the “in-office” experience while working remotely. This means multiplying remote working capacities almost overnight, something that is impossible without a scalable and cloud-based approach. There is little doubt that the Windows Virtual Desktop solution will not only be vital for building resilience for the future of work but also to develop new, agile, and cost-effective approaches going forward.  

Empower your employees to work securely from anywhere with a cloud-based virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). Cloud desktops provide the cost-savings and scalability that on-premises VDI may not offer. Evaluate cloud desktops that help to improve security, simplify management, and reduce costs. 

If you want to learn more about enabling your organisation to work effectively and securely from any location, on any device – Spanish Point can help you to switch to Windows Virtual Desktop seamlessly.Contact Spanish Point today

Why trust Windows Virtual Desktop? 

1. Built-in security  

• Securely store all of your employee and company data in Azure instead of local desktops. 
• Leverage Azure security offering such as Azure Firewall, Azure Security Center, Azure Sentinel and Microsoft Defender ATP for end to end security from the endpoint to the applications.  

2. Dynamic Policy Engines  

• Use conditional access to manage risks before you grant users access to your Windows Virtual Desktop Environment  

• Setup Multi-factor authentications for secure login  
• Protect your Azure infrastructure by enabling role-based access control (RBAC) and detect threats using Azure Security Center. 

3. Compliance  

• Take advantage of Windows Virtual Desktop compliance certifications including ISO 27001, 27018 and 27701, PCI, FedRAMP High for Commercial and HIPAA.  

Reduce cost with Windows Virtual Desktop 

Windows Virtual Desktop is a free service and can be used with your existing Microsoft 365 or Windows per-user licence. There are no additional licence costs. 

Save on infrastructure and IT overhead by moving all of your VDI into a managed service in the cloud. 

Requirements 

From a high level you will require the following items before you can deploy Windows Virtual Desktop 

• An Azure Active Directory
• An Active Directory
• Azure Active Directory Connect
• An Azure Virtual Network updated with your DNS server, with line of sight of your AD DC’s.
• An Azure subscription and its associated ID.
• A Windows Virtual Desktop tenant

Why do you need all of these? 

1. The Azure Active Directory is your identity provider in the cloud and users authenticate against AAD to get access to the Windows Virtual Desktop service
2. When launching published Desktops and Applications – Windows still requires Active Directory authentication.
3. Azure AD Connect is the tool that will provision accounts from AD to AAD to enable 1. above.
4. The Virtual Machines all need to be located on a Virtual Network. That vNet needs access to Active Directory, that can either be located in Azure or on-premises as long as there is connectivity. When Azure deploys new VM’s it will join these VM’s to your Active Directory domain and as such the VM’s need to locate the Domain Controller via DNS, without this DNS server setting being set the VM’s have no name resolution for the local AD, and hence won’t be able to join the domain. If your AD Domain Controllers are on-prem then you will need some connectivity back to on-prem to access those DC’s, either VPN or ExpressRoute.
5. It all runs in an Azure Subscription.
6. A tenant is required inside the WVD management service

The high level deployment process for a WVD host pool and why you need these pre-requisites already in place is to automate all of the following actions:

• Deploy a Virtual Machine (or multiples) in a host pool to host apps and desktops.
• Join the Virtual Machine to your Active Directory.
• Install the local WVD Client agents and join the WVD host pool specified.
• Publish the default published desktop to the user-specified.

Download our White Paper ‘Unbundle the complexity of managing remote workers securely’ to Learn how to reduce the complexity of remote work with virtualisation solutions from Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop.