Improving Engineering Application Delivery at Parsons with Cloudpaging

Parsons Corporation needed a way to ensure engineering applications are delivered quickly to the thousands of employees using a variety of CAD or GIS tools. Parsons engineering had a difficult challenge managing and delivering complex software applications to remote offices around the world. Though many locations had good internet connectivity for the region, those standards would fall short of acceptable, or even usable speeds to support remote applications delivery for desktops with VDI or remote management of physical user devices. In addition, Parsons often engaged with outside contractors and companies which mix multiple hardware and software assets, often not managed nor owned by the company. Those complicated constraints required Parsons to have substantial, expensive on-site IT personnel and resources to support both the requirements of Parsons’ HQ and the needs of its engineers. Every project also required special configuration and customizations of applications and integration with onsite hardware, printers, plotters, and other tools. In addition, these methods were ineffective for tracking and managing all of those global resources. 

Reliable delivery  of data

Cloudpaging has both enabled and transformed the way Parsons delivers tools to their engineers. After investigating and experimenting with many technologies for application and desktop delivery, Parsons found Cloudpaging achieves their goal of a fully self-service solutions model for application deployment. Cloudpaging solved several critical functions for realizing Parsons’ vision of automated delivery and compliance:

1. Dynamic provisioning and rapid deployment of complex, large applications
2. Dynamic integration and configuration of applications to meet the needs of both the project and the end users’ tasks
3. Enforcing compliance for certain project requirements
4. Tracking and monitoring usage of applications and systems for compliance
5. Consolidating, re-allocating and accounting for software licensing assets at a global enterprise level.

Cloudpaging uses its virtualization and layering capabilities to reliably deliver and configure any engineering applications and plugins. Execution and instrumentation at the operating system’s kernel level ensures applications behave as they would if natively installed with similar performance levels.

Benefiting the user

The solution provides direct and measurable benefits for IT administrators, engineers, and provides an ROI that is multifold. End users are especially happy to have the opportunity to run in a computing environment with high level performance. They are able to customize their environment without involving IT administrators, including delivery of their entire engineering suite with all the plug-ins, with no configuration. Using fewer people, IT administrators were able to centralize and scale application deployment to thousands of engineers worldwide, while adhering to compliance policies and providing audit reports of usage.

Numecent, the creator of Cloudpaging technology, continued to work with Parsons over the years to evolve the product offering and has added functionality to make it easier to deliver complex combinations of applications used in AEC and EPC segments.

The complexities of delivering applications in the AEC and EPC segments to a wide variety of direct users, contractors and others not manged by a central IT department is a key benefit Parsons achieved. Control of any new projects by the lead organization is why Cloudpaging is successful at helping deliver the tools needed to users. Ensuring users just joining a project can quickly access the tools they need, without needing to have IT reconfigure their desktop saves value time, as well as expensive IT resources. Flexibility within the IT department can be leveraged for positive results thanks to platforms like Cloudpaging.

Dr. Arthur Hitomi is Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Numecent. He is a recognized figure within the areas of application virtualization and streaming, has contributed to the development of Internet standards, and has authored 17 issued patents. Art is responsible for the company’s overall technology strategy and execution, including its patent portfolio. He has led the acquisitions of other technologies and has invented and led the development of the company’s products including Cloudpaging. In the past Art co-founded Endeavors Technologies and has held both industry and academic positions. Dr. Hitomi holds a BS with honors, MS, and PhD in Information & Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine.