I recently had the chance to communicate with Ken Adams, the CIO of Miles & Stockbridge, about V3 Systems‘ Stratosphere 50.
Please introduce yourself and your organization
I am the Chief Information Office for the firm. I’ve been there for slightly more than 12 years. Miles & Stockbridge is a law firm in Baltimore. We have eight locations, all in the mid-Atlantic area and have 230 attorneys and employ 480 people total.
What were you doing that needed this type of technology?
The issue has always been getting our workstations to be virtualized or even to use thin clients with Citrix or other technology.The biggest issue finally became the speed of this stuff didn’t lend itself to virtualization. We couldn’t run applications fast enough. We could get on the Internet and watch a video and listen to the sound that goes with it, which is important more and more for law firms because we do depositions and things like that. There has never been an answer [for the speed], I have always been looking at it. I’ve tried many different pieces of hardware to get this to work and different thin clients.
What products did you examine before making a decision?
There is a long list of products that I have tried, and none of them failed because of the product themselves but because of the platform they reside on.
I’ve always been keen on the whole virtualization idea as well as SaaS-based applications when they are available. I’ve been really researching application virtualization as well as hardware virtualization for five or more years. Finally we did buy into VMware, and virtualizing our servers early on and that has been complete for several years.
Why did you decide to purchase this one?
Because it is such a simple solution, it is a simple product. It made sense and it was not expensive. It will make all these other software-based products really work now. They would not work before , I know because I tried many of them. And having this hardware product as the base for all of those they will work. I bought a box during the beta phase, and as soon as I put it in I could see a difference in performance.
What tangible benefits have you gotten through the use of this product?
Definitely the performance. We are doing a lot of training now because are doing a lot of training and now we are using virtual desktops to do all that training. We have virtual desktops that are secondary boxes to remote into using VMware View or LogInMe, which is attached to one of these virtual PCs, and the users are getting better performance coming in from home and hitting one of these VMware View PCs because they are sitting on these V3 appliances.
Definitely the speed. The users are very happy with the performance. Even the users are making the comments that they are faster than the PCs they use in the office.
What advice would you offer others facing similar circumstances?
Definitely, and I have talked to other companies, but companies that have been trying to go to virtual desktops but haven’t been able to I think V3 is the answer right now to get people over the hump of performance. From what I have talked to others about, it has always come down to performance as to why they are hesitant and or why they can’t move to virtual desktops. V3 addresses this.
