Below are some of the services we offer.
Citrix Consulting
Within our Citrix Consulting Services, we offer Citrix Design, Deployment and Maintenance services for your new or existing deployments. We have over 15 years’ experience with Citrix and over 9 years directly consulting in the industries listed above. We have serviced deployments from 5 concurrent users to over 20,000 concurrent users and helped clients everywhere in between.
Upgrades and Health Checks are essential to maintaining the Citric Product Lifecycle, and are one of the most common Citrix services we offer. We offer assistance whether you are staying up to date with a Current Release (Latest Version) or sticking with a Long Term Service Release (Fixed version with more than 3 years support).
Citrix is most known for their application virtualization solutions, providing more security than traditional deployments. They allow users to work from anywhere with their XenApp and XenDesktop solutions. Patrick has enjoyed speaking engagements for Citrix Solutions and can be seen discussing Citrix Cloud and its benefits to Citrix clients and partners here: https://youtu.be/Q6gA7vXOLwc?t=40
We have extensive experience with Citrix Product Lines, including:
XenApp
XenDesktop
NetScaler ADC
NetScaler SDWAN
XenServer
UniDesk
Citrix Cloud
We also specialize in several supporting products:
Provisioning Server
StoreFront
Profile Management Solutions (UPM, Norskale, AppSense, RES, Liquidware Labs Profile Unity)
ExtraHop
Splunk
Patrick Coble Consulting can also assist with several Citrix Legacy Products:
MetaFrame Presentation Server Web Interface Ardence WanScaler Branch Repeater
VMware Consulting
Within our VMware Consulting Services, we offer VMware ESX and Horizon Design, Deployment and Maintenance services for your new or existing deployments. We have over 11 years’ experience with VMWare and have worked in deployments with 2 ESX Hosts to 2,000+ along with Horizon View deployments from 5 to 2,000 concurrent users. VMware Horizon is continuing to grow its product line, although its market penetration is still much less than the incumbent of 26 years in this space, Citrix.
VMware is known for the server revolution it started back in 2001 by creating the ability to run multiple operating systems on a single piece of hardware. They have been continually innovating and adding to their portfolio since their founding in 1998. They now own one of the largest EMM Solutions, AirWatch, along with NSX, which is a game-changer in the has Network Security world with integrated and virtualized network security policies. The NSX price has come down drastically over time and their acquisition of Arkin has helped create capabilities to visualize and search the network stack of multiple VMs at once to identify commonalities and or threats. They have since re-branded this product Network Insight, but its power and integration with NSX it is a must for any Enterprise VMware ESX deployment.
Good Overview Video of NSX along with Network Insight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1HFxq7IL3o
Security Consulting
Within our Security Consulting Services, we offer VDI Security Checks and Remediation, along some traditional security services for your new or existing deployments. We have over 18 years’ experience with Computer Security ranging from the Pre Y2k days with AOL and BBS hacking to the modern day advanced threat protection with NSX, Ransomware, Phishing and penetration testing. Our wide-range of experience with vendors and so many industries give us a unique vantage point within the security market. We are ready to put this experience to work for you!
One of the services that we believe is the most beneficial to most clients is a Security Road Mapping Session. We review where your organization is now and where you need to be based on your attack surface. We work together to devise the strategy to help you accomplish your goals within your established budget. Being smart with IT spending is the most important thing any organization can do. Our goal is to assess your attack surface, identify the biggest gaps and come up with a plan to remediate them that is effective and prioritized based on your IT Roadmap.
We offer the following IT Security Services:
IT Security Roadmap Planning Session
Security Staff Augmentation
Vulnerability Scanning
Penetration Tests
Application Testing
Red Team Testing
Practical Security Training
One thing we have learned and experienced over our years in IT is that IT training can be boring and not resonate, because it often lacks direct practical application to your environment. While there are lot of very good training companies out there for professionals and non-technical people, training is most effective when tailored specifically to your needs and your systems. We have created one and two hour curriculums for non-technical, technical leadership and security IT professionals. We often find that many breaches could have been prevented by just a little training and the simple “Don’t Click It” methodology. Sometimes just watching a security compliance video each year isn’t enough to keep people aware of the threats out there, especially when they have trouble relating them to situations they encounter each day. A core part of our process is a scoping call to learn about your business and your employees. This allows us to increase the trainings relevance to your systems and environment.
We also offer practical internet security use training for home users. It goes over day-to-day threats and how to protect your home computer, wireless networks and discover what “Like” really means. This course also goes over some of the basics of how to interact on the internet safely and, in some cases, anonymously.
Enterprise Architecture
Experience with over 500 clients and over 10 years has provided us the opportunity to help consult on your Enterprise Architecture. Creating your IT Roadmap can be a daunting task, and we are available to share best practices gained with both small and large organizations to help you stay up to date and provide fast services to your clients and or users. Spending your budget smartly is very important, we can provide valuable insight.
Services Offered:
IT Budget Planning
IT Roadmap Services
Enterprise Architecture Assistance
VDI Health Checks
Most VDI deployments become one of the most important to ensure healthy operations, with core systems and applications being virtualized. Our VDI Health Checks review hundreds of configuration items in Horizon XenApp and XenDesktop and compare to Citrix, Microsoft, VMware and other industry best practices to ensure your deployment is in a healthy state. If you also have persistent issues within your deployment, these health checks can usually help find the root cause. Applying best practices to remediation items can resolve these issues also. In some instances, we can also recommend third party solutions that can also help stabilize and enhance the user experience.
VDI Security Checks
VDI Security Checks use many of the same checkpoints as a VDI Health Check but with a security focus. We look at all missing security fixes and correlate them to CVS vulnerabilities and look at security best practices within Citrix and VMware VDI deployments. Vulnerability scanning will also be done on the systems and other related backend systems. The downside in many VDI deployments results from one of the strengths of VDI, the base image. One single vulnerability in the base image can introduce hundreds or thousands of vulnerabilities into your datacenter where in most cases there are no firewall rules that will prevent the attacks proliferation.
VDI Penetration Testing
With our VDI Penetration tests, we look at the most popular attack methods externally and internally and will provide recommendations on how to further secure your VDI deployments. We will show you how attackers could pivot and attack your devices.
VDI Upgrades
Upgrades are essential to staying secure and getting the most out of your VDI deployment. Running deployments longer without upgrades increase the amount of change introduced in upgrades and can impact users negatively as opposed to introducing changes slowly over time. There are constant bug fixes and feature enhancements that can help your deployment, but we see so many deployment upgrades being put off for 3-5 years. Our upgrade services can help you stay up to date, while keeping your resources focused on operational support and taking care of other items in your environment. We can also maintain your VDI upgrades constantly if needed.
Staff Augmentation
If you need some IT assistance on a short term or long term basis, please keep us in mind. With over 500 clients and over 18 years in the IT space, we have a proven track record of providing quality service and deployments.