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As one of Finland’s leading engineering companies, Comatec cooperates seamlessly with many parties, data-securely and regardless of location. Experts use the 3D software that’s installed in the server from their own computers, using Citrix’s desktop virtualisation.
“Over the years we have cooperated a lot with Atea, and on one occasion the subject of application virtualisation of our 3D software came up. We were initially a bit sceptical, since the capacity of the data traffic bandwidth is not enough for the older generation of solutions that we tested. However, this first solution, which was created for a specific project between Atea and Citrix, turned out to be so assuring that from now on we will most likely use a growing amount of desktop virtualisation,” says Comatec’s head of IT Juha Marjanen.
“The virtualisation solutions of 3D applications have taken enormous strides in recent times. The use of virtual applications and the desktop gets rid of many of the problems in 3D design from everyday life, and also brings savings on maintenance and equipment costs,” says Atea’s Solution Manager Olli Kinnunen.
Use of 3D software requires a powerful workstation, one equipped with an extremely high-class display adapter. In addition to the device requirements, some headaches are also caused by projects in which the same 3D data is used by many experts, from different companies and in different locations. Bits have been moved from place to place even by couriers delivering them on USB flash drives.
“With virtualisation it’s possible to considerably improve security. For instance, downloading of data onto user’s own computers can be restricted or prevented altogether. 3D-software virtualisation allows workers to transfer from one client environment to another without any need for installation or changes to the workstation software. And if a fault develops in one workstation, the work can be continued immediately on any other workstation. In practice, our employees have not even noticed any differences in whether they are working with design programmes and information on their own computers, or in a virtual environment,” Thornberry says.
“In practice, everything works as planned, and the solution has also delivered on all its promises. It is only now, after this has been proven in practice, that we have been able to begin thinking about the future, and about what other ways this could possibly change the work we do,” Juha Marjanen says.