Thinking beyond Microsoft Office 365: End User Computing in the public sector

Public sector organizations are under more pressure than ever to keep data secure, control costs, and empower workers to be more productive. Traditional on-premises tools, such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), application streaming, and mobile access management software, are hard to secure and lack flexibility and scale. As many organizations are looking at cloud-based solutions to meet their needs, it’s important to note that there is more to cloud-based end user computing (EUC) projects than simply moving Microsoft Office products to the cloud. Organizations should take a comprehensive look at their strategic needs and challenges when evaluating cloud-based EUC solutions.

In contrast to proprietary and partial solutions, where customers may be restricted by vendor lock-in and a “closed ecosystem” approach, Amazon Web Services (AWS) EUC offers customers flexibility in streaming, mobile access to internal company websites, web apps, and file storage.

Drivers to adoption

The main drivers for public sector customers to move to AWS EUC include:

• Efficiency and cost reduction: Eliminate high capital expenses and ongoing maintenance costs, as well as the need to over-provision capacity to meet peak demand, with pay-as-you-go pricing.
• Geographically dispersed organizations: Centrally manage virtual resources and software licenses—and make changes within seconds.
• Flexibility: Stream applications optimized for specific workloads. For example, CAD applications can be hosted on powerful graphics instances, while word processing software can be streamed from a lower-cost virtual machine.
• Innovation: Turn your existing software into software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings without rewriting your applications, either by using Amazon WorkSpaces virtual machines with your application installed or by streaming them to browsers using Amazon AppStream 2.0.
• Reorganization: Start up and tear down in minutes, with software licenses swiftly transferable between users. With AppStream 2.0, the necessity to switch licenses between users becomes obsolete.
• Temporary workers and contractors: Onboard new staff easier, eliminating the need to repeatedly re-provision new hardware and software for temporary workers.
• Security and compliance: Keep company data off your workers’ devices to better protect sensitive information. The AWS Cloud infrastructure provides rich controls, auditing, and broad security accreditations to enable compliance with FedRAMP, CJIS, HIPAA, FERPA, and more. For information on all of the security regulations and standards with which AWS complies, please visit the AWS Compliance page.

Amazon EUC deployment successes

From IT productivity and modernization to business analytics to training and labs, Amazon EUC has been deployed by a range of organizations in the public sector. For example, the Louisiana Department of Corrections implemented a broader education program to give inmates better employment opportunities upon release. The solution uses ALTO Software running on Amazon WorkSpaces cloud desktops. Read more in the Louisiana Department of Corrections case study.

Amazon WorkSpaces also enabled James Cook University to increase its workstation capacity by a factor of two. The solution provides students and professors secure and consistent access to software on their own devices from anywhere. Read more in the James Cook University case study.

And Melbourne Business School uses Amazon WorkSpaces to deliver their course on business analytics, dramatically improving performance of their environment with consistent uptime of 99.89%. Read more in the Melbourne Business School case study.

Find out more about AWS EUC

AWS has a range of EUC services available for the public sector, including Amazon WorkSpaces, Amazon AppStream 2.0, Amazon WorkDocs, and Amazon WorkLink. Find out more about AWS EUC services on our End User Computing (EUC) on AWS webpage.

If you have questions about how to get started with AWS EUC, contact us.