Healthcare Company Launches Rapid Self-Service Deployment and Improves Management of Thousands of Cloud Desktops Using Amazon WorkSpaces

Healthcare and pharmaceutical companies depend on secure, reliable, and flexible infrastructure to promote innovation and power crucial research and development work. When one global healthcare company wanted to improve the user experience for its workforce and application owners, it migrated its virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) out of on-premises data centers to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and selected Amazon AppStream 2.0, a service for secure, reliable, and scalable application streaming needs.

Now, the company provides thousands of users with fast, efficient access to the applications and resources they need to do their jobs. Using AWS, the organization accelerates user productivity and proactively addresses technical issues while reducing costs and maintaining security.

 Migrating to Amazon WorkSpaces and Supporting 11,500 Users Globally

With a globally distributed workforce, the healthcare company wanted to improve its ability to quickly scale with regional demand and accelerate onboarding while streamlining solution management.

Running its own data centers locally did not facilitate a good experience for users around the world. “As we looked at cloud environments, we saw the simplicity of expansion they provide,” says the company’s director of virtual platforms. “We realized we could have the flexibility to right-size the solution at any given time to meet the needs of the business.” So, in 2018, the company migrated its on-premises VDI to Amazon WorkSpaces, a fully managed VDI service on AWS. By 2025, the company was using Amazon WorkSpaces to support 11,500 users, from developers and other internal teams to external contractors. To meet increased demand from global markets, the company scaled from three to six AWS Regions in a matter of weeks with limited engineering resources. “This would not have been possible with our legacy on-premises environment,” says the company’s director of virtual platforms.

For solution monitoring purposes, Amazon WorkSpaces emits metrics to Amazon CloudWatch, a service for monitoring resources on AWS, on premises, and on other clouds. The company worked with Aufsite, an infrastructure solutions provider and AWS Partner, to build custom dashboards using data provided by Amazon CloudWatch. The dashboards supply engineers with data visualization specifically designed to support the company’s unique needs, making it simple to quickly identify and remediate issues.

With its proactive approach, the healthcare company now receives an average of only 7 monthly support tickets instead of the hundreds it had to deal with before implementing monitoring. “We wanted to be a force multiplier instead of a reactive team that’s constantly dealing with incoming issues,” says the company’s senior manager and desktop streaming engineer. “We’re using tools wherever we can to prevent issues before they occur, and the dashboards we built are a massive part of that.”

Meanwhile, it’s speeding up the provisioning process for virtual desktops using Amazon WorkSpaces Pools—which organizations can use to create pools of virtual desktops to simplify management and reduce costs—with nonpersistent instances. With these improvements, the company can provision new workspaces in less than 90 minutes globally.

Accelerating Application Deployment and Optimizing Infrastructure Costs

The company is also using AppStream 2.0 to provide self-service app streaming services internally so developers can accomplish their goals faster without having to deal with technical details involving infrastructure. “By using AppStream 2.0, we’ve increased our speed to market while reducing costs for our application teams so they can focus on what matters most, which is the science,” says the company’s director of virtual platforms.

Due to the expected scale of their AppStream 2.0 environment, the healthcare company knew it would be imperative to add two AppStream 2.0 integrated portals. One portal would empower end users to quickly connect to applications and resources or request access. The second portal would give the company’s internal application teams direct access to manage the full AppStream 2.0 life cycle of their deployments, removing a managed service layer that relied on traditional hands-on-keyboard administrative functions. This approach empowers application owners to self-deploy new apps while helping the company’s IT department manage risk through built-in guardrails and controls. It also reduces the long-term cost of the streaming solution.

The company once again turned to Aufsite for support in designing, building, and delivering these portals. “The collaboration with AWS has been outstanding,” says Farhan Haider, founder and managing director at Aufsite. “The dedication of the AWS team to enterprise empowerment—especially in end-user computing—has provided the resources for us to coarchitect a solution that’s not only scalable and compliant but also truly transformational for the healthcare company.” The end-user portal has been so successful that the company plans to incorporate Amazon WorkSpaces. The addition of Amazon WorkSpaces will provide a single point of entry for the majority of streaming resources, further reducing support tickets and cost.

“The AppStream 2.0 environment is all based around self-service, giving those decisions to our users in a way that’s meaningful and simple to use,” says the company’s director of virtual platforms. “If you’re a developer, you can go into the portal and simply upgrade to a higher compute specification, no questions asked.” And the company can limit access to only the necessary applications, so there’s no risk that a user accidentally modifies parts of the environment that are outside of their purview.

“The value of using AppStream 2.0 is in our ability to scale up or down at any time and to manage costs compared with running a traditional server 24 hours per day regardless of demand,” says the company’s director of virtual platforms. “By using AppStream 2.0, we have the flexibility to match the ever-changing needs of the business with agility and ease.”

Looking to the Future with AWS

 With its self-service portal in production on AWS, the healthcare company has already improved development speed, monitoring, and cost efficiency while maintaining strong security. The company plans to continue improving its self-service portals for application owners. It also aims to migrate all its users to AppStream 2.0 within 1 year of the initial launch.

“It has been tremendous working on AWS,” says the company’s director of virtual platforms. “It’s the people behind the technology that make it work. We continue working with the AWS team to deliver on the requirements of our business, even as it’s constantly changing.”