When Sanmina, a Fortune 500 integrated manufacturing services leader, decided to begin its migration to Chrome Enterprise, it experienced a common roadblock: legacy applications.
The company began its migration to Chrome Enterprise a few years ago, and it saw fast growth of Chrome adoption internally among employees who primarily utilized web-based applications. But the organization soon realized that it needed to find a way to support a handful of business-critical applications that were not compatible with Chrome devices if it wanted to drive enterprise-wide Chrome adoption.
“While many of the applications we use internally are web-enabled, we still have a few critical applications – like ERP and Warehouse Management – that would not work on Chrome devices,” said Mario Zúñiga, IT Director, Digital Workplace at Sanmina. “That’s when we knew we needed a Digital Workspace solution that would enable our employees to access all of the apps they need to be productive from anywhere on their device.”
Finding the Right Approach to Secure Digital Workspaces
There are multiple approaches to Digital Workspaces including Virtual Desktops (VDI), Desktop as a Service (DaaS), and Virtual Application Delivery. Sanmina’s strategy required a Digital Workspace solution that balances simple deployment & management with a great end-user experience – all while providing in-depth security.
“A key piece of our decision to move to Chrome Enterprise was its incredible performance, security, and the way that it helps simplify workflows. We were not willing to adopt any solution that added complexity, hindered our employees’ productivity, or sacrificed security in any way,” said Zúñiga. “We decided that a Virtual Application Delivery approach to Digital Workspaces would provide the best experience for our employees, especially as we migrated to Chrome devices. ”
“We also plan to move more of our workflows to Cloud Platforms over time, so we needed a Digital Workspace platform that was flexible enough to give us the option to deploy in both our existing data centers and in the Cloud,” added Zúñiga.
Cameyo’s Virtual App Delivery Removes Roadblocks to Chrome Adoption
Previously, Sanmina had a solution in place to support Chrome adoption on a small scale. But it needed to move to an enterprise-grade solution that could support the projected growth and expansion of its Chrome deployment.
After testing several solutions, Sanmina ultimately selected Cameyo’s Virtual Application Delivery platfom to provide their employees with simple, seamless, and secure access to the legacy applications they need to stay productive from anywhere. Cameyo’s Virtual App Delivery approach enables Sanmina to deliver any Windows or internal web apps to any device, including all Chrome devices, right from the browser. And Cameyo is able to do so at a global scale.
“Cameyo’s platform plays a critical role in enabling our Digital Workplace strategy by removing the legacy application roadblocks that were preventing widespread Chrome adoption here at Sanmina,” said Zúñiga. “Now our employees can seamlessly access all of their business-critical applications – even our ERP apps that aren’t compatible with Chrome devices – right from the browser with Cameyo. Cameyo’s Virtual App Delivery platform is the perfect blend of simplicity, a seamless user experience, and advanced security.”
Currently, Sanmina has 10,000 of its employees (about 30 percent) across North America, Latin America, EMEA, and Asia on Chrome devices, and it plans to continue to migrate the remainder of its employees to Chrome over time.
“Cameyo is a key element to enabling our long-term Chrome Enterprise strategy,” said Zúñiga. “The fact that Cameyo has deep partnerships and integration with Chrome Enterprise and Google Cloud Platform makes this an even more strategic fit.”
Currently Sanmina hosts Cameyo in a hybrid model across two data centers in the U.S. as well as in the Cloud. The Cameyo platform is available as a fully-hosted service in either GCP or Microsoft Azure, but it can also be self-hosted in any environment (any cloud, on-premises, or hybrid) on a Windows Server without the need for additional infrastructure or third-party products, providing greater flexibility, cost-savings, and security.
Key Benefits
Reduced Cost – “Cameyo’s Virtual App Delivery platform provides us with cost savings in a variety of ways. First, there are the cost savings of moving to Chrome to begin with – which reduces our total device cost by 40% or more – which we could not have done without Cameyo. There’s also the cost savings that comes from the amount of time and effort Cameyo helps us save when it comes to setting up each end user. Previously, with PC laptops, we’d have to purchase a new device, get that device set up, install all the applications and drivers, etc. Now we can just provide users with a Chromebook and they are up and running in minutes,” said Zúñiga.
“But there’s also a significant cost savings associated with how much Cameyo reduces our support costs. Even if a user has a hardware issue, we can simply issue them a new Chromebook and they can sign in and access everything immediately with no downtime.”
Better User Experience – “With Cameyo, we can move our employees over to Chrome devices without disrupting their workflows. Cameyo’s platform enables us to give our employees access to the full desktop version of their legacy Windows applications on any Chrome device, but instead of the app needing to be physically installed and managed on each device, Cameyo provides access to those apps through the browser. For our employees, the experience is seamless. We’ve surveyed users to collect feedback on their experience using their apps through Cameyo, and the results were phenomenal,” said Zúñiga.
Ease of Use – “Deploying Cameyo was remarkably simple, and we had our applications installed and published with Cameyo in no time. Session management, load balancing, failover, etc. – it’s all handled by Cameyo, so all we had to focus on was the apps we wanted to publish. It was very easy to get set up, and ongoing management is a breeze – especially when compared to traditional Virtual Desktop approaches,” said Zúñiga.
Increased Security – “One of the biggest draws of migrating to Chrome Enterprise was its security, so we had to find a Virtual App Delivery platform that would preserve our security posture. The fact that Cameyo has a zero-trust security model baked in at its core just adds additional layers of security so that we can confidently enable our employees to work from anywhere, on any device, with the utmost security,” said Zúñiga.