What role do workstations currently play? How are they positioned in the new IT environments? What relationship do they have with technologies such as cloud computing? That problems are solving currently?
These are just some of the questions we have tried to answer at our IT Meeting «The transformation of jobs, the future of workstations» and in which we have had the collaboration of Lenovo, AMD and Microsoft.
In this meeting we have had the participation of Jose Manuel Munoz Galindo (Lenovo Workstations Business Development Manager) Simon Vinals Larruga (AMD Business Director), Miguel Angel Solana Campins (Business development manager at 3M), Ildefonso Vera Gomez (Director of process innovation and Digital Transformation at Isdefe), Andrea Petersen Bull (Digital Transformation Manager of Colegio Brains), Antonio Ruiz-Roso Luengo (Sales Specialist & Business Development Customer & User Experience of Evolutio), Ruben Perez Sobrino (Business Director at Seresco), Luis J. Rios Pita (director of technology programs at ESIC Business & Marketing School), Cesar Fernandez Monterrubio (Director of Information Systems at Sener), Eduardo Balmaseda (Infrastructure and devops manager at Dominion Global).
Moderated by Gustavo de Porcellinis (commercial director of TPNET) and Rudolph of Juana (Director of MCPRO), our guests highlighted that as a high-performance model, these workstations are valuable tools for professionals from different industries, with benefits such as securityhe performancethe durability and the ability to expansion of these teams.
In addition, the participants agreed when pointing out that workstations are an excellent option for companies that need to maintain the confidentiality of their data, since they have advanced security systems that protect user data and information.
“We face the challenge of responding to the enormous and growing volume of different types of data and here workstations are key for real-time processing” – Jose Manuel Muñoz Galindo
Also, CIOs valued the fact that they are much more powerful than conventional computers, which means they can handle complex and demanding tasks. without suffering a drop in performancedrawing attention to how they are designed to withstand intensive and continuous use, to which is added that many workstations have modular components that can be easily updated and replaced, which extends their useful life and reduces maintenance costs.
We detail below other interesting points that were highlighted throughout this meeting and that in a good way define the future of these work teams in companies.
Maximum performance anywhere
One of the themes that was repeated the most at the meeting revolved around the role that these devices are playing in the new hybrid workspaces (“the worker wants to carry out their activity from anywhere and from any device”), which are added to the growing need of workers to be able to carry out their activity in mobile environments.
How, in this sense, workstations have been abandoning their classic tower form factor, to move on to portable workstations that have become true engineering “works of art”, if one takes into account that they not only have to secure he performancebut in a smaller size, improve the way in which heat is dissipated, noise is kept at bay (“nobody wants a fan that fires continuously at home”) and, the most difficult challenge to overcome in this type of devices, work is being done so that the autonomy of these lock stations is similar in each generation that passes to that of a professional laptop.
“We always talk about the cloud, but they are increasingly important for the development of critical applications, in sectors such as transport, health, and even in critical infrastructures for the country, local data processing” – Simón Viñals Larruga
At the same time, almost all highlighted the importance of these teams in what is known as the new industry 4.0. Here they highlighted how more and more companies are betting on using workstations in robotic plants, in environments where it is necessary, for example, to carry out massive image processing, or in industries that need to manage a large amount of data in real time and in which it generally does not “compensate” to virtualize it or go to instances of cloud computing.
Allies in Cloud
In this sense, one of the conclusions that landed most often at our discussion table was that taking into account that today any task of design, data analysis, engineering, etc. requires an increasing volume of data and that it is also necessary to have more and more powerful equipment to be able to process it, rely exclusively on the cloud Not only is it not always profitable from a financial point of view, but in areas such as latency, availability and even data privacy, it is also not profitable from a technical point of view, for example when it comes to obtaining fast rendering. of a project, working in test environments subject to constant change or in spaces where every millisecond can make a difference. However, they also highlighted that the workstation does not replace a cloud that has more than obvious advantages, but rather complements it.
But how is a workstation different then from what was defined in the debate as a “muscled PC”? In addition to some of the characteristics that we have already mentioned, the importance of the fact that they have dedicated chips to isolate the most platform critics, tools designed to secure the BIOS, or all kinds of certifications that ensure, for example, that all the drivers that are integrated into the equipment will remain safely updated. Also, and in this, special emphasis was placed, which, being built on standards, makes it tremendously easier for the systems area to manage an entire park of machines remotely.
In the case of hardware, they are not only distinguished by the performance that is assumed, but also by having GPUs specially designed for data processing in creative and industrial environments, and components such as power supplies, memory, or SSD disks optimized to offer optimal performance in high stress situationsIn turn, this is combined with the flexibility of being compatible with all kinds of external peripherals, the ability to, for example, hot-swap disks or a communication bus that does not create bottlenecks when it comes to moving data to other external locations.
Workstation as a Service
On the other hand, CIOs also pointed out how interesting it is that as the professions of the future are increasingly related to data, students will not only have to become familiar with the cloud and virtual environments, but also with workstations.
In this sense, many commented how for certain professions, knowing how to manage a work station and knowing its peculiarities it will be strategicespecially as its use is imposed in sectors such as health/scientific, industrial or the more “traditional” of design.
Finally, in this IT Meeting, it was addressed how the way in which they end up reaching companies that are beginning to value, also here, is changing as well. pay-per-use models. Thus, in what in this case is known as DaaS (Device as a Service), it was assessed that the workstations have a higher residual value and the quotas are lower precisely because the value of each machine is higher, which favors this type of use “as a service”.
Definitely, «The transformation of jobs, the future of workstations» served as a showcase to show how far from being in the background, workstations are acquiring a clear leading role in many environments, standing out in the IT park of a large number of organizations and companies and completing their cloud resources.
