VDI in times of COVID-19

Some will say it’s luck… I prefer to call it effort.

Did you know that eDreams ODIGEO installed and configured a VDI environment for remote work before the Pandemic started?

And that is the first company to have such a high volume of Horizon Workspace (VDI) for its Software Engineers based on Linux?

To put you in context, I will tell you that it’s a project that the GITOPS team worked hard on for quite some time. Following our proposal, we got green light to implement in 2019 — just in time before we were all bound to switch to remote work in 2020!

Quite a technical challenge, (especially due to the implementation of a large volume of VDI’s Linux), and also a time challenge, which was a complete success because of the professionals that make up the GITOPS team.

But… where is the challenge?

• Lack of documentation to support us: Being one of the first in this type of project implies knowing that there won’t be as much documentation available as desired. In our case, we encountered several incidents that, due to requirements, and due to performance, forced us to stop the project, and dedicate a lot of time to small incidents, which required highly worked solutions.

“eDreams ODIGEO is without any doubt the main principal reference in Spain in Horizon on Linux” — Manufacturer Iberia Account Executive

• Linux as the central axis of the project: The success of the project was to be able to deliver Linux VDI’s to our software Engineers, based on their needs and requirements, which on several occasions collided head-on with what seemed a priori that the application was offering to us. Having the Linux template ready and functioning at a 100% involved some months of continuous workarounds.
• A team challenge: The team had to respond to many challenges, because sometimes, moving forward and solving an incident involved creating new ones, due to the high complexity of the configurations, and as aforementioned, because of the limited available documentation we found. However, I can proudly say that the team stayed strong and we successfully overcame all difficulties we encountered.

And… What were the achievements?

• Team cohesion: As a first point I would like to highlight this, the team was already very good, but given the high complexity and interrelation of the configurations, a perfect gear was created in which we all synchronised, rowing in the same direction, helping one another and not letting ourselves decline.
• PRE-Lockdown service: Once assembled, and with the warning signs of an imminent COVID crisis approaching us, we managed to deliver 150 new laptops configured and ready to be used as ThinClient in our new VDI environment in one week. Likewise, in that month from start-up to confinement, 300 VDIs were delivered to our Software Engineers (located in different parts of the world) with more than considerable power, and allowing them to work from anywhere in the world, as if they were in their office.
• Capacities VS Costs: The implementation of VDI offered us the possibility of being elastic when offering hardware to our colleagues, and being able to adapt to their needs, and also offered us the ability to immediately offer them a powerful work tool, which in the traditional market would have had a much higher cost and we would also be heavily penalised, due to purchase times, delivery times, etc.

In short, in this time of change, where the pandemic has forced us to quickly adapt to remote work, where immediacy prevails, and where the need to have power and resources available for our teams is a must, if you do not reinvent yourself, you may end up stagnating, and also paying it with direct costs such as paying for new laptops and PC’s, and indirect costs such as high time invested in resolution of incidents, low quality of support, etc.

For this reason and for many others, the commitment to technology and digital transformation is an important pillar for companies like eDreams ODIGEO to compete, be at an excellent level and don’t stagnate.