Azure services

Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD)

Looking to set up Azure Virtual Desktop in your organisation?

Access our Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) expertise in one of two ways:

Deliver your project yourself with free ongoing expert advice

When you buy your Azure consumption through Compete366, receive the added benefit of ongoing expert AVD advice – whenever you need, at no extra cost.
We help your in-house IT Team on your AVD journey – with everything from architecture through to deployment, migration, security, resilience, scaling and cost-optimisation advice.

Think of us as one of the team.

Book a free, no obligation call with one of our Azure consultants

Let us deliver your AVD project for you for a one-off project fee

Want to use Microsoft AVD, but don’t have capacity or the skill-set in-house?

For a one-off fee our experts can deliver your AVD project for you, end to end.

Leaving you free to do what you do best.

Book a free, no obligation call with one of our Azure consultants

What is Azure Virtual Desktop?

Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) is Microsoft’s industry-leading virtual desktop service that runs in the cloud. It provides all the benefits you’d expect from a virtual desktop while offering the same tools and resources your employees already use.

It enables users to access their desktop environments and applications remotely from any device with an internet connection, offering scalability and centralised management for remote and on-site teams.

Why use Azure Virtual Desktop for business?

Enable flexible working

Azure Virtual Desktop allows remote access to desktop applications from any device. This streamlines business activities and boosts productivity, allowing your teams to work remotely.

Scalability:

Using an Azure remote desktop, it is easy to scale your desktop infrastructure based on your current demand without needing any on-premises hardware.

Security:

Azure Virtual Desktop consists of a strong set of security features, including encrypted connections and multi-factor authentication. This allows for data protection that is in line with industry regulations.

Cost-effectiveness:

Implementing Azure Virtual Desktop offers a significantly more cost-effective solution to using hardware within your business. Only paying for required resources and no maintenance or upgrade costs.

Our customer promise

If you sign up with Compete366, we guarantee that you’ll pay the same as when you subscribe directly with Microsoft for Azure or M365, but with the added benefit of free ongoing expert advice and guidance from our dedicated team of experienced technical consultants.

Get in touch

Expert team of Azure Virtual Desktop Consultants

Our expert team of consultants have successfully delivered many Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) projects to maximise impact and minimise costs for our clients.

Microsoft has recognised our expertise through the Infrastructure (Azure) Solution Partner designation and through the Advanced Specialisation in Azure Virtual desktop.

Microsoft states,” The Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop Specialisation validates a partner’s deep expertise in deploying and scaling virtualised desktops and applications on Azure using Azure Virtual Desktop.” We are one of a handful of UK partners serving the SMB market to have obtained this specialisation.

Why choose Compete366 as your Microsoft Consultancy?

Experience

Compete366’s Azure Specialists have extensive experience in deploying Azure Remote Desktop. Working with us ensures that your Azure Virtual Desktop is optimised fully in line with your business goals and requirements. With a track record of delivering tailored solutions and results-driven strategies, Compete366 are the only solution for maximising your AVD system.

Flexible Service

When you work with us, you have the flexibility to choose how you want to implement your Azure project. You can either manage the implementation yourself, benefiting from our free ongoing advice, or opt for our expert AVD consultants to deliver the project for you for a one-off fee. This allows organisations to tailor their approach to best suit their needs and resources.

Customer-centric approach:

At Compete366, we pride ourselves on customer satisfaction. We are committed to providing a personalised service and transparent communication. We build strong partnerships based on a shared commitment to unlocking the full advantages and driving the success of your Azure Virtual Desktop integration.

Read more about AVD on our blog

We regularly share our insights about Microsoft AVD on our blog, which IT decision-makers will find useful. We’ve also developed an AVD eBook which you can download here.

How Compete366 deploy Azure Virtual Desktop

Hassle-free project services

We work with you to manage the implementation of Azure Virtual Desktop with minimum business disruption.

Key project tasks include:

We work with you to identify which members of your organisation require access to Azure Virtual Desktop and to understand their specific needs. This ensures that the deployment is tailored to support your business processes effectively.

  • We ensure that you have all the necessary components for setting up your AVD environment. This includes:
    • Entra ID (was Azure Active Directory): Essential for managing user access and security.
    • Azure Subscription: Required to access Azure services.
    • Domain Controller Synced with Azure AD: Ensures seamless authentication and authorisation.
    • Virtual Network for Session Hosts: Provides the networking backbone for your AVD.
    • Azure Virtual Desktop Session Hosts: The virtual machines that users will connect to.
    • FSLogix for User Profile Containers: Manages user profiles efficiently across sessions.
    • Central Storage Location for FSLogix User Profile Disks: Ensures that user profiles are stored centrally and can be accessed quickly.

This includes configuring and syncing your on-premises domain controller or one in Azure with Azure AD to provide a hybrid identity solution. This step ensures that users can access resources seamlessly, whether they are on-premises or in the cloud.

We deploy a standard Azure VM and use it to create the base image for your Azure Virtual Desktop Session Hosts. This image will be configured with the necessary applications and settings tailored to your organisation’s needs.

We collaborate with you to determine the appropriate size and number of session hosts. This decision is based on an assessment of the computing power required to support your users’ workloads, ensuring optimal performance and cost efficiency.

Host pools are a collection of one or more identical virtual machines (Session Hosts) within the Azure AVD environment. We set up these host pools to ensure scalability and reliability for your users.

We configure application groups and assign users to them so that they can sign into the AVD service to access their virtual desktop sessions seamlessly.

We provide guidance on balancing latency and speed based on your specific requirements and locations, ensuring an optimal user experience.

We work with you to make sure you have the correct AVD licences for your rollout.

After AVD is deployed, our priority is to test its performance for your users. We assist in refining the setup based on user density per processor and cost considerations to ensure the required performance is achieved.

What our customers say

“We had great support from the Compete366 AVD expert, who was really helpful, and guided me through options to tackle issues that arose.”

“The great thing about our AVD set up is that we have a custom set up for each project which Compete366 showed me how to do. And with the scalability and flexibility of AVD – we can meet clients’ expectations and get project users up and running more quickly.”

Amir Dangol, Senior IT Manager – Integrity

“From the outset we were impressed with the response from our consultant from Compete366 who guided us through the process of setting up Azure Virtual Desktop, and the implementation went very well.”

Dave Burgess, IT Support Analyst, Optimise Media

Read our case studies

Discover how we’ve successfully helped small and medium-sized businesses across the UK to make the most of Microsoft’s market-leading AVD solution.

Speak to one of our Azure Expert Consultants

Contact us to set up AVD in your organisation

Access our Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) expertise in one of two ways:

We help you deliver

Let us help you deliver your Azure Virtual Desktop project and get free ongoing expert advice.

– OR –

We deliver for you

We’ll take the strain and deliver your Azure Virtual Desktop project for you for a one-off project fee.

Contact our Microsoft specialists

Phone or email us to find out more – or book a free, no-obligation call with our technical consultants using the contact form.

“It’s great to work with the Compete366 team, the team members are really knowledgeable, helpful and responsive. No question is too difficult for them. They have really helped us to manage our Azure costs and ensure we have the right environment. When we bring a new customer on-board we can scale up immediately via the Azure portal and quickly make environments available to our customers.”

“We also find that there’s never a heavy sales pitch from them – they are technically focused and recommend what’s right for us.”

Paul Coyne, Rusada

“We had great support from the Compete366 AVD expert, who was really helpful, and guided me through options to tackle issues that arose.”

“The great thing about our AVD set up is that we have a custom set up for each project which Compete366 showed me how to do. And with the scalability and flexibility of AVD – we can meet clients’ expectations and get project users up and running more quickly.”

Amir Dangol, Senior IT Manager, Integrity

“We were immediately impressed with the advice that the Compete366 specialists in Azure Architecture were able to provide. This was all new to us and we really needed some external expertise that we could use to get our questions answered. The beauty of working with Compete366 is that we transferred our Azure consumption to them, and at the same time received all of their advice and guidance free of charge.”

Tim Entwistle, Head of Software Development, Herrco

“Working with Compete366 has been like extending our own team – they are extremely and easy to work with. Right from the outset, it was clear what was on offer – everything was presented to us in a straightforward and uncomplicated way. They also provided just the right level of challenge to our developers and saved us time and money by suggesting better ways to implement our infrastructure.”

Oliver Mackereth, Project Director, Hanse

“Compete366 were able to help us leverage some useful contacts in Microsoft. We really value the expert advice and guidance that they have offered us in setting up a highly scalable infrastructure. We are also setting in place a regular monthly meeting which will allow us to further refine our architecture and ensure we keep on track as our requirements grow and change.”

Matt Brocklehurst, Technical Director - AWOL Adventure

“I have been delighted with the migration, where my team worked very hard, supported by expert advice from Compete366, and achieved everything in the timescale we had set out. Compete 366 made sure that we didn’t make any expensive mistakes, and guided us through the process”

Darrell Cann, Managing Director, APEX
Jon Milward
Director

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