Remote Access
Without Compromises
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Why HP ZCentral beats VDI and cloud for high-performance PC power from anywhere.
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Gain Collaboration Without Compromise
The current state of work is ... disruption. If you’re like many organizations, you have employees working offsite, and you are exploring remote solutions like VDI and cloud. While this setup may work fine for your regular office staff, it throttles down the productivity of your creative and technical users, from designers to data scientists. Can you create an in-office technology experience for your high-performance workers? In this guide, you’ll learn how the world’s first single-sourced remote workstation solution2 from Z by HP can give you
up to 33% higher performance with dedicated remote computing for as little as 59% of the cost of virtualized workstations.3
Compared to cloud, Z by HP remote solutions offer considerably lower TCO and quick, predictable response times. That’s better performance, without compromises—for your innovators or for IT.
50%
of end users say they feel like they don’t have the tools they need to work remotely1 as seamlessly as they do from their desks.
These performance needs grow even more intensive for these power users:
• Creative professionals
• Product designers
• Engineers
• Data scientists
Meet Your Creative and Technical Pro Needs
These compute-intensive users share a need for high-end computing and low-latency connectivity because they’re generating designs and insights that drive your company’s intellectual property. These workers are the ones who need to collaborate worldwide on graphics-intensive apps, analyze big data live in the field, or create award-winning work overnight. Their tasks differ, but their requirements have key similarities:
Product Designers and Engineers
Engineers want powerful devices in the field and at customer meetings to show crisp, color-true visuals and make real-time updates to complex CAD files. They get frustrated when large data sets and files open and transfer slowly when they’re on the go. They need access to workstation power in the field—with no loss in performance—while working on thin-and-light devices.
Data Scientists
Data scientists want remote access to collect unstructured data, clean it, model it, and quickly pull insights from it so managers can make on-the-fly decisions. They get frustrated with limited space in the site data closet and slow data-upload times. They need remote access to data at the edge source to clean it up and run real-time algorithms, without waiting for batch uploads to the cloud.
Creators
Creative pros want thin, light, and mobile solutions to create and collaborate anywhere, plus access to high-end workstation power for visual effects development. They get frustrated with the difficulty of collaborating on the same files with a counterpart in another location. They need one location that houses all the files so the files can be quickly pulled, edited, and reviewed.
No matter what their specific jobs entail, all kinds of technical and creative professionals benefit from a remote workflow that provides secure, shared access to compute power, data, and applications. In today’s hybrid work environment, they need to be able to change work locations dynamically and access full, fluid GPU and CPU acceleration from anywhere.
Why Traditional Remote Models Slow You Down.
VDI and cloud are the traditional approaches for remote work. But for performance-driven creators and technical users, these solutions can slow down the workflow. VDI restricts compute power, and cloud provisioning and performance can’t always keep pace with the explosion of data-heavy workloads.
VDI
Workflows often rely on shared corporate storage for digital content creation assets, large design files that the entire team works on, or data that needs to stay secure. That drives some companies to use a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) or virtualized servers that access a virtualized pool of computing resources. But these methods don’t provide undivided access to workstation-class performance and can introduce latency, complexity, and overhead costs.4, 5
Cloud
Putting apps and storage in the cloud can be a viable solution for regular office workers, but it presents several challenges for intensive users. Provisioning more space isn’t always an instant process. Overhead expenses grow rapidly with large amounts of data moving to and from the cloud. Location, configuration, and bandwidth constraints can cause unpredictable performance. Lastly, when data leaves your premises, security risks increase.
While traditional VDI, cloud, and remote desktop apps are the typical way for employees to “tunnel in” to the company network, the more users that are connected (as in, many people are working from home at a peak time), the more the performance can deteriorate. Unlike these other remote-access solutions, HP ZCentral is built specifically to support workstation-class visual workloads over broadband, which has significantly lower bandwidth than local area connections.
Centralize and Accelerate High-end Users
The HP ZCentral solution moves past the traditional problems with VDI and cloud for industries that need to enable intensive remote users with fast, secure access to data and applications. This centralized stack combines hardware and software in a turnkey solution—empowering your global workforce with remote workstation access that rivals the experience of working locally. It also eases the IT burden with significant cost, security, and manageability advantages.
Boost Performance—Over Any Infrastructure
Even if you’re already running other brands of PC hardware, VMs, or software, you can still get the smooth performance of HP remote access by overlaying our software atop your existing infrastructure and remote-access applications—it’s both vendor- and OS-agnostic. Turn any device—including tablets, laptops, and thin clients—from any manufacturer into a high-performance PC through the HP and Teradici remote access software.
Lay the Foundation for No-compromise Collaboration With HP ZCentral
Workstation Access From Anywhere and Any Device.6
With OS-independent software that provides high-fidelity remote workstation connectivity, remote users can access workstation power from their existing client device—as if they were in the office. Users can collaborate in near real time by sharing workstations one-to-many or many-to-one. In addition to a connection that’s solely portioned for task-intensive users, advanced compression and dynamic resizing keep all users connected in virtual real time. HP and Teradici remote access software helps performance-hungry users work like they’re local:
1:1 dedicated connection with full CPU and GPU power to handle intense workloads
Collaboration tools built in for sharing and controlling remote sessions with other users
Exceptional image quality with support for 4K or multiple-monitor setups, plus automatic adaptation to the receiver’s resolution
Application-independent—only pixels are sent, not data
Screen sessions are scalable to any size
Support for Windows 10 touch and gestures
Support for specialized client hardware like a 3D-space mouse and financial-trading keyboard
Support for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS across laptops, tablets, and even thin clients
Bring Visibility and Control With HP ZCentral
Workstation Management Made Easy.
Manage connections between remote users and your centralized hardware with HP and Teradici connection management software. Users can easily connect to a dedicated workstation or the next available one within a pool of workstations—no technical or system knowledge needed. IT department managers gain total remote control of all HP and Teradici remote access software connections:
Monitor status with workstation health indicators
Hard power-on or power-off for total system control7
Easily manage all user connections remotely from a single console
Integrated with Microsoft Active Directory for easy user setup
Assign individual machines or share pools of available workstation resources
One-click access for environments running
Z by HP Workstations
Complete Your Solution With Racked Z by HP Workstations
Secure Compute Power
Although you can run HP and Teradici remote access software and connection management software over your existing non-HP infrastructure, your power users get the optimal experience if you’re connecting to Z by HP Workstations (Z by HP). Even if your user endpoints are not workstation-class PCs, Z by HP lets them harness powerful performance for compute-intensive remote workflows, including graphics-dedicated CPU cores.
HP ZCentral 4R Workstations are 1U rack-mountable, so you can co-locate them next to your data storage for fast access to project files—no extra remote hardware or software required.5 And as the most secure workstation,8 Z by HP keeps data highly protected and within the workstation. It’s a simple end-to-end solution for power users and the IT teams that support them.
Tailor the HP ZCentral Experience With HP Device-as-a-service9
Simpler, Easier, Customer-Customizable.
If you’re not ready to own the hardware yourself—or you need more cost predictability—HP Device-as-a-Service (DaaS) for HP ZCentral simplifies device management with:
Devices
Multi-OS, multi-form-factor device selections
Flexibility
Tailored offerings with simplified purchasing
Insights
Analytics plus proactive management and security
New features for HP DaaS include factory provisioning for out-of-the-box productivity, HP TechPulse telemetry for better end-user and IT satisfaction, and proactive security with government-grade technology plus simplified management.
Clearer Collaboration Over Cloud
Even organizations that are dedicated to VDI or cloud-based workstations find that layering HP and Teradici remote access software on top of their existing solutions can dramatically improve performance and end-user experience, as well as make life easier for IT.
• Predictable cost: Considerably lower TCO compared to cloud workstations, which are better-suited for flex use than long-term use.
• Protected location: Critical data stays inside the company for maximized security.
• Licensing-compliant: Standard ISV licensing and support vs. VDI and cloud.
• Turnkey solution: One vendor for all hardware, software, support, and services.
Outperform VDI
HP ZCentral solutions provide workload and workflow-specific dedicated compute power plus faster project load times compared to virtualization.3 A centralized computing infrastructure with HP ZCentral and racked Z by HP Workstations can deliver up to: