Run desktops and desktop applications in the cloud in a highly secure and automated manner.
Host your Desktops and Applications in the AWS Public Cloud
Enterprises often have very strict regulations in their business that they need to follow. Finance companies need highly controlled environments for any type of customer or systems interactions. As an example, and of course there are many other use cases: DevOps engineers need flexibility in their work and are often burdened with these regulations that impact their work.
With desktops hosted in the cloud, you get both a highly controlled yet still flexible work environment that end users and engineers can utilize while continuing to do their work in a productive manner.
AWS WorkSpaces offers virtual desktops hosted in the cloud — a fully managed cloud VDI solution. You can choose between Linux and Windows desktops. These desktops can be highly automated during setup and operation. As an AWS service, you pay what you consume. Each desktop is billed separately by the hour that it runs.
If you need to stream legacy applications to your users, you can do that as well. AWS Appstream 2.0 is a fantastic service that streams individual applications to end users via web browsers. Windows-based applications can be very easily packaged and streamed over the internet. Again, only the streamed sessions are paid and there is no infrastructure to provision or manage.
AWS Workspaces highly automated
The AWS WorkSpaces offering from AWS is a VDI solution that copebit can build and operate for you. VDI desktops with Linux and Windows are offered, including software distribution with Puppet or Ansible, whichever you prefer.
Provisioning of the desktops can be highly automated with CloudFormation or Terraform.
Furthermore, all day-2 operation is almost automatic. Patching the operating system or the applications can be scheduled and won’t burden your admins.
Applications Streamed from the Cloud
With AWS AppStream 2.0, you can stream any Windows-based application via a browser to your clients. We at copebit have delivered AppStream for multiple clients, including to a very large SaaS provider offering financial services.
You hand over your software as Windows binary or MSI or any other application package and we have it streaming to your clients within days. AppStream is fully autoscaled, highly redundant and really well-automated.
We have operationalized the automated patching and application upgrade. New application versions can be released to your clients well tested, with a CICD pipeline and deployed in a blue/green fashion.
Built in Elasticity
Cloud hosted desktops and applications require a lot of performance to provide great end user experience. AWS has built its services to scale automatically, with no infrastructure to maintain or scale.
You define your autoscaling policies, and AWS handles the rest. This spins up new required instances very quickly and therefore provides an almost instantaneous access to the applications and desktops, and as it is autoscaled, also at great cost levels with minimal spare capacity deployed. As your end users consume the services, more capacity is automatically spun up and put to service. It’s the perfect balance between great end user experience and costs.
We at copebit have great experience in creating and tuning such autoscaling policies for your specific needs.
Security
Monthly or even weekly patching cycles require a lot of automation and testing. With AWS end user computing, you delegate the security of the underlying infrastructure to the public cloud provider. With AWS AppStream and WorkSpaces services, you work with the well-known shared responsibility model. AWS secures the infrastructure, including hypervisors, virtual machines, and the hosting platform. You just have to make sure that your desktop operating system and the installed applications are regularly updated and hardened.
With such a managed setup, you improve your overall security posture of streamed desktops and applications to new levels.
copebit can help you build and operate highly secure desktop and application streaming services.