How Yotta Virtual Pro Workstations are enabling Design from Anywhere?

Praneet Tulshyan, a Motion Graphics and Presentation Designer, at Vimarsa Consulting (a creative storytelling firm based in Mumbai), sums it up perfectly, “As creative professionals, we need to work on powerful, high-end workstations carrying GPU cards, fast processors, tons of storage, etc. But the average life of these expensive workstations is roughly between 2-3 years, as with every software upgrade, they become obsolete or need major upgrades. And at times when we are working on heavy files, these machines tend to crash, forcing us to miss the project deadlines.”

“With the onset of pandemic last year, I faced many issues while shifting my office workstation home. Remote working became a big hurdle in collaborating with my colleagues. Moreover, certain projects require us to work on the same file, which means we had to keep uploading and downloading it to keep going. In this process, we ended up creating various versions of the same file,” sighs Praneet.

The year that changed the creative industry

Praneet’s experience puts things in perspective. While the pandemic made remote working a reality for many, some have struggled a bit more than others. Functions like sales and marketing were quick to adapt, given that much of their work can be done with a laptop and a mobile phone. However, this meant dealing with challenges surrounding high budgets, unreliable network connectivity, latency issues, and virtual collaborations across teams for creative and design agencies. Addressing these challenges required leveraging existing high-tech solutions and ensuring survival and seamless business experience for clients and customers.

A ‘stay-at-home’ demanded that everybody became more ‘data-driven and agile, including the creative and graphics industry, to gain a competitive edge by optimising costs and ensuring business continuity. It is also worth noting that these industries are heavily reliant on human connections, that requires a physical work environment to foster team collaboration and bonding. As in the case of design and animation studios, employees often share the same workstations and depend on each other for creative insights. But the pandemic was an inflexion point for the industry, encouraging agencies to change the way they operated overnight. This is where Yotta Virtual Pro Workstations saves the day. Professionals like Praneet believe that accessing powerful hardware remotely and harnessing its full potential, compared to traditional workstations, is a critical element.

“In a remote working scenario, virtual graphics workstations solve many challenges faced by designers, editors, producers and organisations at large. When I tried working on Yotta Virtual Pro Workstation, it didn’t feel like I was accessing a virtual system. However, the entire process of accessing and working on it was seamless and user-friendly. Furthermore, I could easily collaborate with my colleagues. After I am done, they simply log in remotely, review the files, edit, and save them. The sheer performance, features, and user experience of virtual graphics workstations stand out,” notes Praneet.

Yotta Virtual Pro workstations powered with multiple enterprise-grade CPUs, vGPUs, greater memory bandwidth, and increased storage secured in a highly scalable data center facility can allow creative professionals to continue doing great work remotely by shifting to high-performance computing, equally good or with even better processing power via cloud technology. Even if someone runs the application on a tablet via a 4G network, they will have uninterrupted access as the software runs on servers in high-powered data centers. These workstations are powered with real-time, remote display technologies such as interactive GUI workflows and 3D visualisations, etc., to ensure the actual CAD and BIM data is secured in the data center within a controlled environment while rendered, encrypted pixels are delivered to the client’s device to access files and applications. This ensures sensitive data does not fall into the wrong hands, streamlines workflows, and keeps the version control safe with the company.

Hariharan, Design Head with a leading Creative Agency, agrees, “It is a leap as a workstation. The user does not need a powerful system. Any computer with basic processing capability can perform the task that was possible only by high configuration systems. It is a whole new level, a potent tool with ease of access. It will hugely benefit the people who can’t afford expensive machines for high computational tasks. The experience is seamless, as though working on my device. I didn’t experience any lag in mouse movement or opening folders inside the portal.”

Low investment, low latency, high returns

Virtual workstations enabled with virtual GPU technology can handle even the most demanding workloads with the ability to deliver HD experience for every visual, providing powerful graphics computing for use anywhere. It allows users to connect easily from a remote location while hardly taking any time for installation, provides low latency and decreases CPU load at the user’s end. Virtual workstations on the cloud minimise the organisation’s OPEX with no CAPEX commitment, offering optimum utilisation, on-demand scalability, and security with 24/7 support. Companies can also benefit from increasing their graphics processing power per device or increasing the number of devices depending on new projects or increased workloads without investing in new hardware.

“I live in a metro city. With my high bandwidth connection, this tool is very efficient to work on files from mediocre systems. Moreover, it is a huge plus on the budget. I will not have to rent a studio to do editing work as I can use the virtual workstation or design huge file sizes at ease,” adds Hariharan.

The road ahead

Designers and creative professionals have been wanting mobile workstations packed with powerful GPU even before the pandemic. Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) and design departments in almost every company have voiced the need to accelerate the adoption of virtualisation to allow them to connect from a device at home and harness the performance needed to run complex graphics workloads. Widespread adoption of virtual reality, mixed reality, and real-time rendering has proven effective for engineering and design teams to collaborate in a virtual environment in real-time outside the confines of office from different geographical locations.

With the help of emerging technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence and IoT, a smarter, automated future lies ahead of us. Adopting these advanced technologies and graphics virtualisation will help enhance productivity, enable faster decision-making, and evolve the creative, designing, and graphics industry work today. Graphics workstations on the cloud are a timely solution for businesses and creative professionals to collaborate remotely and be more productive. While it is a new trend that’s fast catching up, it is bound to be around long after our work routine goes back to normal, given the many benefits it brings to industries that use graphics-intensive applications.