Why Virtual PCs?

 

I’ve gotten a lot of feedback suggesting that we could communicate better about this VDI change thingy.  I heard you. I’m a huge believer in getting buy in for new processes, including technology.  Especially with smart people – and there is a rumor we might have one or two of them around here somewhere – the background on the deployment of something like virtual desktop infrastructure goes a long way toward acceptance and even enthusiasm.  That is my goal with this message – to explain and get buy in.

 

First off, you are all correct that what we had before worked great.  I am rather proud to have been at the helm for that.  I worked at it with iPower – but it wasn’t particularly hard work.  I can point at a pile of rocks and tell someone to break them as well as the next guy.  But, pointing at the right rocks meant we had fewer than 8 hours or so of downtime annually.  Fat, dumb, and happy is an excellent way to describe our feelings toward what is the most critical point of failure in our entire business.  Go ahead, read that again and think about it. You’re welcome – if the job is done correctly, you should never think about what might happen without the IT infrastructure.  If you didn’t worry about how critical it really is, then I get an A+. Yeah, sure, iPower too. I’m not great at sharing a stage.

 

Then, March 2020.  Everyone had to work remotely and we went to almost 100% RDC overnight.  Not just attorneys – everyone.  Y’all would never believe me if I described the challenge that presented, especially with me about a month out of my delightfully unexpected hospital sabbatical.  I was back part time for about two weeks when that happened. Nevertheless, the whole system ran like a well-oiled machine, just as it was designed to do if we couldn’t go to the office for whatever reason, and we stabilized in about a week.  Billing time, getting things done, generating revenue like we never left.  And that success led to something completely new: the idea that we might not need physical office space, or at least not all the time.

 

It wasn’t long until we had attorneys who didn’t want to have an office at all and some who were willing to share space.  This permitted more growth without a corresponding increase in overhead (or at least not much).  However, it also manifested a lot of new problems no one had ever tackled before. I love the saying, “if you pray for rain, be prepared to deal with some mud.”  That sums it up.  So I put on some wellies and got in the pit.

 

Remote work feels (to some) like a panacea.  No more commuting.  The comfort of home.  More family time.  Fewer interruptions. Pajamas at 2 p.m. The list goes on.  But how do two attorneys share one PC?  How can a visiting attorney use an otherwise empty office without kicking off whoever is using the PC in that office?  Where do we put a physical PC if the user has no physical office?  Under the existing system, those things are not impossible problems.  However, solutions are very impractical, threatening to increase costs and decrease productivity, which is the opposite of what an IT system should do. We needed to figure out a way that multiple PCs could use one mouse, keyboard, and monitors if someone was in the office without setting up duplicate hardware for two or more PCs in one office space. We tried the switchy flippy thingy, but it got pretty clear, really quickly, that the switchy flippy thingy wasn’t a long term solution.  This was particularly true if more than two attorneys would use an office, which is what happens with the “hotel” concept. 

 

The thing that really convinced me we needed to change our model was having a bunch of PCs under an IT desk connected to an even bigger switchy flippy thingy for those who didn’t want an office.  It just looked low rent.  Frankly, it offended my sensibilities as an aircraft technician and engineer.  I am trained to accept only highly organized and reliable systems on airplanes.  That training has resulted in an adverse psychological reaction to anything less.  This looked just like a bowl of spaghetti. In addition, if any of those PCs had an issue, good luck identifying which one it was.  I tried that once. None were labeled and, without a physical office, identifying a particular PC under a nondescript desk was literally impossible. But even worse, plugging all that stuff into one 110v outlet probably presented a fire hazard, too.  My hair stood on end when I saw what had been done.  That definitely could not continue.

 

On the other hand, I seriously enjoyed turning those PCs off one at a time to see who complained.  Not only did we identify the PCs, I got entertained.  Win win! 

 

Enter virtual desktop infrastructure or VDI.  Lousy name, even lousier initials.  Sounds like we need a shot of penicillin or something. Maybe virtual PC is better? Anyway, it is a really slick solution to these new issues.

 

With a virtual desktop, we do not need a physical PC assigned to one attorney.  Anyone can log into any PC and then use that PC to access their virtual desktop environment.  There’s no chance someone will be kicked out.  They are no longer connecting remotely to that physical PC.  Boom –problem solved: one office, one PC, one set of peripherals, any user, any time.  We reduce the cost (over time) because we no longer need a full PC and we make true office sharing or hoteling a reality for those that are into that kink.  Solving that specific problem is probably the single biggest reason for moving to VDI.  It also explains why you need to stop using RDC and start using VDI even in the office – logging into a physical PC defeats the most important purpose of VDI.  The idea is to have your VDI desktop be your only working platform.  That way, you make it yours, just like your physical PC now, and it follows you everywhere.

 

VDI does other things, too.  When we onboarded people in the past – and some of you know this first hand – setting up a new PC was anything but simple or consistent.  I felt like Forrest Gump – “new computers are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.”  So we’d bring someone on, completely screw up the PC, and leave them not only unable to work for days, but also wondering what kind of high- school-computer-lab-turned-law-firm they had joined.  Embarrassing to say the least and I hated having my name on that situation.  With VDI, we can now start with a “golden image.”  It already exists.  We create a new user and they’re up and running immediately.  We can customize from there, but it’s night and day better than what we had been doing.  And if someone goes – delete.  No PC to reformat, no hardware to collect.

 

Upgrades and patches are easier too.  You don’t care about that behind the scene stuff, but it’s important stuff.   The play won’t go on without the lighting and backdrops. We don’t need to push patches to PCs and hope they’re on.  It just happens and no one knows the difference.

 

Security is better. Even if someone can access our office, they’re not going to get in VDI without knowing username, password, and DUO code.  Nothing is on a hard drive to steal – even your desktop in VDI lives on a server and is backed up, just like the rest of the network.  Logging in is more annoying than it was, but blame the bad guys for that.  We have to make sure idle virtual PCs are shut down and require a new log in after a period of time.  It’s just how things are now and doing that with VDI saves network resources, too.

 

Although we are still experiencing some deployment pain – yes, me too - eventually we’ll work out the bugs and this will just run like you’re sitting at a physical PC – your PC – but anywhere in the world.  It will travel with you, so to speak. It even works through a regular (compatible) internet browser.  And it might even be better than a physical PC.  Anyone using AIM (which should be everyone) has already seen that AIM runs a lot faster than it did on a physical PC.  We should see more of that as we go.  Already, it’s been more stable than RDC, although there are some exceptions. 

 

Back to what I wrote before.  If you pray for rain, be prepared to deal with some mud.  We are definitely working out some kinks.  Testing was good (if you think you have trouble now, you shoulda seen it then), but there’s nothing quite like rolling out a product and seeing all the ways regular users can break it.  But that’s a very good thing – with everyone working in it every day and complaining about it, we’re going to find those bugs and squash them. 

 

So get on the thing, ask for help, and howl at the top of your lungs until it’s right.  You can howl at me, too, just be careful not to engage “litigator mode.”  It’s autonomous and engages without warning anytime I am presented with an irrational argument.  Once engaged, litigator mode assumes you are wrong about everything and will seek to prove it.

 

In any case, the worst thing you can do is suffer in silence or avoid this new gadget. This is a quantum leap, hopefully forward.  Accordingly, it is not without bumps in the road.  We need you to tell us when you hit those bumps so we can send out the road crew.  And, eventually, that road will be very smooth indeed.  Stay with it.