I'm curious, tech folk. What's keeping you or you company from running an any-device approach (including BYOD) with all corporate-mandated software (edit for clarity: I meant desktop applications) running in virtual desktops in the browser, with something like Apache Guacamole?
@xahteiwi Necessity. All of the mandated software works in the browser (chat, planning software, …). What's left is lightweight enough to run locally on pretty much any hardware and isn't really dependant on a certain version.
Compared to that, the lag experienced in full remote desktops through typical home networks for even basic development work was seens as more interrupting than the slower push/pull speeds.
@xahteiwi So far it's been:
Pick Lenovo or Mac, budget is €XYZ, configure for your needs within that. Special hardware or licenses have to be cleared by your team lead or above depending on cost. Install this for VPN, that to chat, and we suggest a certain browser. If you're technical capable have fun with other configs but don't complain to us if it doesn't work.
@xahteiwi Unfortunately, as we're being intergrated more into our big mother company, this will end this year. They've got a contract with an external company doing the whole support so it's 4 laptop models and only certain pre-approved software.
@xahteiwi as a developer: BYOD+Remote Desktop is IMHO the worst of both worlds.
I have to buy my own costly hardware. Until now the laptops bought by my employer where always more premium then what I own. Also I don't want to use private hardware for work.
Moreover, with remote desktop for company apps, I have to use an alien desktop environment. The main reason as a developer for BYOD is, I can use the environment I'm most familiar with.
If BYOD, make every corporate mandated app, a web app.
@xahteiwi according to the Guacamole copy+paste is a huge mess. That are basics I expected to work reliable. My experience is, in a native web frontend this works much better.
@hikhvar Having solved this particular issue with my team in a (non-corporate-desktop) Guacamole application just this year, I can assert that copy & paste is by no means an insurmountable problem.
@hikhvar Just for clarity: I wrote any device, including BYOD.
Meaning company is happy to give you a device, but in the event that you don't like that device you don't have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get some other device approved, you can just use the one you prefer (as long as it has a browser).
Hmm. Considering how many companies rely on interactive chat to do anything, I'd say permanent connectivity has now been accepted as a prerequisite to do any work at all. I don't quite see how having virtual desktops would make that bit any worse?
@xahteiwi Well, my wife works in KRITIS and has several scenarios where this is not acceptable.
I also review incident response procedures, and one of the critical questions there is how capable a team is to actually respond if their service infrastructure fails.
This may be fine for about 90% of cases or whatever, but it isn't for every job.
My personal opinion is that instead of accepting the 90% as normal, we should work towards making the 10% so easy to support it becomes normal.
Okay consider this: suppose in order to work you need a fully configured laptop, a working VPN, and some desktop applications. Now if your laptop fails to boot, you're completely out of action.
Suppose instead you need no specific end user device, and no VPN. All you need is a browser, a username/password, and a FIDO2 token. Now your laptop fails to boot, you grab any other device, fire up its browser, authenticate, and you're back on.
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