HPE Visual Remote Guidance: A workhorse solution for the new digital workplace

[ServicesExperts]

If you’re looking for a more efficient and effective way to deliver support, training and inspection/certification in your hybrid workplace, HPE’s flexible collaborative environment could be the answer.

By Garry Orsolini, Director of Technology - Network, Workplace, & IoT Services, HPE GreenLake

Technologies that enable remote work and online productivity – from teleconferencing to virtual desktop infrastructure – have grabbed most of the headlines in companies’ responses to the COVID-19 outbreak. But the pandemic has produced its share of relatively unsung hero technologies, too. Visual Remote Guidance (VRG) is one that immediately comes to mind. HPE VRG has demonstrated its value as a pillar of the modern hybrid workplace, and its role will continue to expand as the crisis recedes.

As early as March last year, HPE sent out a message to our customers and partners that, as part of our broad response to the pandemic, the company was equipped to support them virtually and remotely through HPE VRG. We have thousands of engineers who have been trained to use the solution for customer support, allowing us to solve problems remotely without having to send somebody on-site. VRG was a tremendous help for installing customer self-repair (CSR) parts, for example. The part could be quickly shipped and we could get on a virtual VRG session with the customer to walk them through the repair or update.

There were also some situations where critical installations had to happen. For example, there was a hospital that had to get a new system up and running quickly, and they couldn't bring anybody on-site. We worked with the customer and used VRG to facilitate that deployment.

It was all very well received; companies could see the efficiency and the effectiveness of doing things this way. And HPE quickly realized that the solution could be a great help for companies building out their own response strategies and specific use cases in the COVID context. By the end of June we had announced five return-to-work solutions to help organizations accelerate recovery, one of which relied on HPE VRG and partner technologies. We have continued to evolve those services, with VRG playing a key role in connecting remote and on-site specialists – see the visual below. (Check out the full infographic: A day at a reimagined office)

Connect to the right people, with the right data, in minutes

Let me back up a bit here, in case you’re not familiar with the technology, and give you a quick overview of HPE Visual Remote Guidance and what it does. It is a secure collaboration environment that enables users to connect efficiently to most clients – including Mac, Linux, Microsoft Windows, iOS, and android (including wearables) – in live, visually-guided interactive sessions. The solution focuses on three areas: remote support, remote training, and remote inspection/certification. It enables you to get to the heart of these activities very quickly by getting the right people connected.

So in the HPE scenario, for example, the customer would call into our service center, and the support engineer would ask them if they would like to use VRG. If yes, they can just go to the app store(s), get the app in a few minutes, enter their name and ‘quick key’ on a screen and get a direct visual connection to HPE expertise literally within minutes. Throughout the session, the customer has a secure connection on Wi-Fi or LTE for live, visually guided collaboration. (Watch the video at the end of this post to see how it works).

Companies can use HPE VRG to connect up their own experts and employees in the same way. The environment can support ease of data collection and transfer even for demanding workloads such as telestration – freehand markup over a video image, over low bandwidth networks. Many of our customers in the pharmaceutical area rely on multiple high-definition images to confirm and document that sub-components are compliant before they're integrated into their products. HPE VRG provides a flexible, robust environment where teams can work on these and similar complex tasks – together, even when geographically dispersed.

A plethora of use cases

I mentioned pharma, but of course companies in a wide variety of sectors – oil and gas, aeronautics, automotive – are facing the challenge of safely operating facilities that are usually staffed by large numbers of people, with a much-reduced workforce. They’re looking for new ways to collaborate and communicate, especially where they’re working with physical objects, plant and equipment. With HPE VRG, they can connect their top experts remotely with on-site folks whose skills may be of a more general nature to get important maintenance and repair jobs done.

It could be somebody on a production line with a piece of machinery down. Or a robotic device that needs to be updated, but they can’t get the expert onsite to do the work. VRG provides the secure collaboration to connect the person at the point of need with the right subject matter expert. 

In many cases, hands-free voice-activated wearables are key, but it could be via mobile devices or phones. Collaboration could be one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many. I've been on calls involving experts from around the world working together to solve a production line issue and keep processes moving.

The number of use cases is almost unlimited – here are a few more potential customer scenarios from our brochure HPE Visual Remote Guidance for the Enterprise Powered by HPE MyRoom:

• A technical services company can provide field service with wearable devices.
• An IT department can leverage desktop sharing to improve end-user support/helpdesk service for remote users.
• A city fire department can train instructors through virtual hands-on training and demonstrations.
• A law firm can create a legal archive of proceedings without the need of additional production staff.
• An insurance company can leverage VRG in the hands of field adjusters to speed up claims processing by recording damages in real time.

Companies keep finding more and more use cases for HPE VRG, as well as increasingly innovative ways to leverage it, and I’ll describe some of those in my next blog.

Read more about HPE VRG and how it can boost productivity, increase efficiency and decrease costs for your organization.

Learn how HPE can help you reinvent your workplace with a secure, seamless, safe digital workplace across sites, facilities and home offices – and everywhere in-between.

And remember, HPE finance solutions offer a variety of financial and asset lifecycle services that you can leverage right now to support your needs today and position your business for future success.

Watch this short video to learn how HPE VRG enables you to connect directly to an HPE expert right from your smartphone or tablet, with just a few taps.

Garry Orsolini is a Technology Director for HPE IoT Advisory and Professional Services. He has been involved with technical innovation for over thirty-five years. Garry manages worldwide engineering teams responsible for HPE's MyRoom VRG R&D.

Garry holds three patents for collaboration software. He understands how global organizations can best utilize Collaboration Enabled Business Processes (CEBP) to enhance organizational efficiencies. He received his BA in Philosophy from Eastern Nazarene College, Quincy, MA, and a MS-MIS from California State University, Sacramento, CA.

Currently, Garry’s organization is focusing on connecting the latest wearable and mobility devices securely to the enterprise to change the landscape of service delivery and remote support and training via AI-enhanced solutions. Garry lives in Sacramento, CA.

Contact Garry on LinkedIn:

@GOrsolini

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Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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