Ruben's EUC Industry Bento Box - Feb 2023

1. Andreessen Horowitz: The Cost of Cloud, a Trillion Dollar Paradox
   An interesting article from Andreessen Horowitz about the actual cost of the cloud, the paradox, its unit economics of cloud repatriation, and its impact on gross profit. The cloud is a major shift in computing and has already had a significant impact on IT spending. It is still growing rapidly and offers advantages in efficiency and cost-effectiveness. It also enables companies to focus on innovation and growth. As companies gain more experience using the cloud, it is becoming clear that while it provides benefits early on, the pressure it puts on margins can outweigh the benefits as a company grows and growth slows. This shift happens later in a company's life and is difficult to reverse due to years of development focused on new features, rather than infrastructure optimization.
   
   

   Ruben's Thoughts:
   
   Many companies push for a cloud-first approach. I believe it is more effective to adopt a cloud-smart approach, where applications are run in the most suitable environment - whether that be a hybrid or multi-cloud setup. This approach allows for greater flexibility and efficiency, rather than blindly adhering to a cloud-first or cloud-only focus, which can limit options and lead to unnecessary costs.

2. Frame in 2022: A Year of Milestones and Innovations
   2022 was yet another awesome year for Nutanix Frame. From new features and enhancements to new partnerships and industry recognition, we're incredibly proud of our entire team and all the hard work that continues to position Frame as a pioneer and leader in the Desktop as a Service industry. In total, we deployed 47 releases of Frame in 2022 - talk about CI/CD! 🙂 These releases included new features, enhancements, and bug fixes across the Frame control plane, Frame Remoting Protocol, Frame agent services on the workload VMs, and Frame App.
3. Mind. Blown. 🤯 6 AI tools that will make you question reality
   AI tools offer significant value by automating repetitive tasks, analyzing data, and providing predictive insights. These tools have the ability to process large amounts of data and make decisions quickly, enabling businesses to gain a competitive edge and improve operational efficiency. Furthermore, AI tools can assist in identifying patterns, trends, and anomalies that may not be immediately visible to the human eye, ultimately leading to improved decision-making. Overall, the implementation of AI tools can significantly enhance the performance and productivity of an organization and individuals like you and me.
   
   

   Ruben's Thoughts:
   
   AI tools are handy for answering questions, writing code, composing emails (and songs), and can be an alternative to Google Search, allowing users to view and edit audio (and video) as text, auto-correct & rewrite tweets in different styles. A great video from NVIDIA to watch is 'I am AI'.

4. State of EUC Union (2022 – 2023) Report from DaaS Like A Pro
   With 706 people contributing, the ninth annual DaaS Like A Pro community survey and State of the EUC Union Report is one of a kind in the industry! Topics in the survey will cover Desktop as a Service (DaaS), VDI, public cloud, cloud PC, security, devices, single-session and multi-session operating systems, storage, hypervisors, GPUs, manageability, tools, and the key EUC initiatives for 2023 and beyond. A great read!
5. 37signals: Our Cloud Spend in 2022
   37signals, the Chicago-based software company behind Basecamp, provides a detailed accounting of their public cloud (AWS) spend in 2022, which totaled $3.2M. The company is now in the process of moving a significant number of their services out of AWS and onto their own hardware hosted in leased rackspace in order to reduce their infrastructure spend for 2023.
   
   

   Ruben's Thoughts:
   
   From cloud-first to cloud-smart in action 🙂

6. ZDNET: CES 2023 was huge for AR and VR. Here's everything important that was announced
   The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this year provided an insight into potential new advancements in premium VR headsets, as well as introducing innovative products from fresh companies and various exciting advancements.
   
   

   Ruben's Thoughts:
   
   Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR) headsets do enter the End User Computing space. I do see customers using these devices for collaboration, entertainment, providing workers with real-time information and instructions, and also for educational and training purposes. I am aware of customers in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) who are using VR.

   
   Run any software with just a browser on any device, including VR/AR/MR - love IT.
   

For the Geeks

7. Microsoft Azure Architecture Icons
   Who doesn't like to create nice architecture and networking diagrams? Microsoft released icon updates for Azure, including 106 new icons for various services and components.
8. Nvidia Broadcast can now deep fake your eyes to make you look at the camera
   The latest update to Nvidia Broadcast includes a new feature called Eye Contact, which utilizes AI technology to simulate the appearance of making eye contact with the camera. This means that even if you are looking away from the camera in real life, the software can make it appear as though you are directly engaging with your audience. Handy!
9. AMD: The Four Pillars of Streaming Games from the Cloud
   Cloud gaming is revolutionizing the way players interact with their preferred games by providing them with remote access to platforms and titles hosted in the cloud. This technology virtualizes platforms in a data center, transmitting only pixel data to the user at a rate of 30-60 (or higher) images per second through an encrypted stream over the internet, offering gamers an unmatched level of accessibility and ease of use to new titles and platform experiences. Players can access this data using common devices such as TVs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, or specialized thin gaming consoles and handhelds.
   
   

   Ruben's Thoughts:
   
   What I like about this article is that four different technical pillars which impact the user experience are explained: bitrate, framerate, display resolution, and visual quality. The technology to deliver a great experience for streaming games from the cloud also applies to Desktop as a Service with Frame. A great read!

10. GO-EUC - Microsoft Teams optimization in a virtual desktop
    Our community friends at GO-EUC did a deep analysis of running Microsoft Teams on Azure Virtual Desktop, Windows 365 Cloud PC, and Citrix DaaS. The use of Microsoft Teams has become widespread as the primary means of communication and collaboration within many companies. However, those of you who utilize Microsoft Teams in a virtualized environment are aware that it can be difficult to deliver a great user experience. The article talks about optimizing Teams, the definition of user experience, structural similarity index measure (SSIM), and ViSQOL (Virtual Speech Quality Objective Listener). Some really interesting findings!
    
    

    Ruben's Thoughts:
    
    Why even bother worrying about Microsoft Teams (or Zoom) optimization and offloading audio/video traffic to the endpoint device when you don't have to 🙂 With Frame, we are the first and only DaaS solution to leverage WebRTC for our protocol's (FRP) transport layer. This provides customers with out-of-the-box support for webcam and videoconferencing 100% within the browser, no offloading to the client required - it just works. There are no application compatibility, endpoint client or plug-in requirements, or version issues to concern yourself with.

    
    Delivering a great user experience does require some additional CPU resources on the Frame workload VM to run smoothly, but that is already the case with Windows 10/11, Microsoft 365 Apps, modern browsers, web apps, and Teams anyway. For most customers, the value of ‘it just works' is well worth the incremental CPU resources required.

About Nutanix Frame

App and Desktops. Simplified. That's what Desktop-as-a-Service should be and that's what Frame is.

Whether you are a large enterprise, SMB, K-12/higher education institution, or a service provider, we look forward to helping you and your organization be better prepared for tomorrow's challenges.

Are you ready to boost your DaaS energy and get a better understanding of what Frame is all about? Check out this 4-minute demo!

Want to take Frame on a free 12-hour test drive? Click here!

Thanks for reading if you have any questions feel free to contact me!

Ruben Spruijt

Sr. Technologist, Nutanix Frame

ruben.spruijt@nutanix.com

@rspruijt