Remote Desktop: Solution Selection and Deployment
Once your business decides to pursue remote desktop support, you must select a solution carefully. Your selection criteria should include, but are not necessarily limited to, the following:
User Experience
If the user experience is confusing or daunting, then users will avoid it. They might also pursue alternative “shadow-IT” or “stealth-IT” options, which IT has not approved or secured. This can put your entire environment at risk.
Security
Every candidate remote desktop-support solution you consider must support security at least as robust as your current environment. In addition, you must scrutinize how each candidate solution manages the Internet connections on which your remote users will rely.
Specific data security and privacy issues can include, but may not be limited to, the following:
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User credit card and financial data
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Personally identifiable information (PII) and confidential records
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Proprietary business information and intellectual property (IP)
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Company financial data
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Records-retention requirements (including recordings of remote desktop sessions)
Problem Escalation and Resolution
Even your chosen solution for remote desktop support will sometimes require vendor support. You should ensure all your candidate solutions offer comprehensive, multi-channel and documented processes for support and problem escalation. You should also ensure that they can fulfill or exceed your internal service level agreements (SLAs) and service level objectives (SLOs).
Branding Consistency
If your environment includes support from external providers, then users can become confused if they see multiple company names or logos when trying to access “their” resources. Your chosen solution should include options for modifying “look and feel” consistently across multiple providers’ services.
Compliance
Regulations, such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), impose strict requirements for the protection of citizens’ PII wherever they are around the world. Penalties for GDPR non-compliance are as much as four percent of worldwide corporate revenues or 20 million Euros, whichever is greater, per incident. You must ensure that your candidate remote desktop solutions aid and do not impair your organization’s capability to comply with all relevant regulations and corporate policies.
Licensing Specifics
Remote connections are often, by definition, transient and itinerant. The total number of connections you may need can increase and decrease as remote users travel, are added and are removed from your environment. How your candidate vendors license their software and charge for upgrades can determine the true cost-effectiveness of their offerings. You must ensure licenses are sufficiently flexible to avoid the costs of over-provisioning and the performance penalties of under-provisioning.
Vendor Strength and Commitment
As is true for every IT investment your business makes, you must ensure your chosen remote-support-solution vendor is as committed to your company’s success as you and your team. Vendors that have succeeded with customers similar to your business are especially worthy of your consideration if they satisfy your other criteria.
Once you’ve chosen a remote-desktop-solution vendor, you should follow your proven practices for deploying any application. Pick an initial set of trial users. Inform them of their pivotal role in the ultimate selection of your solution. Implement it for them and gather their input and feedback, especially on usability and interoperability with incumbent solutions. Modify your configuration and deployment choices based on that information, and then expand to other groups of remote users and support providers. In addition, ensure your chosen vendor has proven experience supporting the implementation process at companies similar to yours.
Before and as you pursue deployment of your chosen solution, ensure your support agents receive comprehensive, timely training. Wherever possible, employ your chosen solution to deliver that training, and use those efforts to evaluate the solution’s “real-life” performance characteristics.