To think that this time twelve months ago we had no idea we were mere weeks away from a world-wide shutdown is almost incomprehensible. People were entering their offices, meeting colleagues for happy hours, and had no idea that we were about to face a disruption the likes of which most of us had never seen.

Then it happened. In the blink of an eye the office environment all but vanished and organizations had to scramble to empower their workforce to securely work from their homes on any devices they wished to use.

Last March, in an effort to assist organizations with their transition to working remotely, we swiftly developed a set of pre-configured, validated Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) packages that allowed businesses to easily deploy a VDI environment to provide enhanced security and productivity to their remote employees.

The response was profound. Organizations who had yet to adopt VDI suddenly discovered the benefits a virtual environment inherently provided, and our ability to quickly ship and deploy these solutions allowed their business to continue uninterrupted. But we knewwe could do better.

In the following months, we returned to the drawing board and redesigned the program so that we could continue to offer best-in-class, pre-configured VDI solutions, but now with the added benefit of allowing organizations the ability to tailor certain aspects of the bundles to best fit their unique needs. Through this improvement, theCisco Rapid Deploy Bundleswere launched.

Rapid Deploy Bundles are built upon Cisco UCS^TMand HyperFlex^TMarchitecture with Intel? 2^ndGeneration Xeon? processors and a variety of GPU options. The bundles also come with a 180-day free trial of Cisco Intersight Essential edition- our IT operations management platform that allows you to deploy, monitor and maintain your distributed environment all from the cloud.

Through the Rapid Deploy Bundles, organizations can benefit from:

• Empowering their remote workforce to securely work anytime, anywhere, on any device
• The ability to easily scale their virtual environment in 500 to 1000-seat increments
• The freedom to choose GPUs and CPUs that best work for their business applications
• Optional worry-free installation provided by Cisco CX, leveraging defined best practices
• Streamlined ordering, choice of designs and storage partners

As we look at the status of the world today, returning to normal is no longer the goal- it's now about adapting to thenew normal. Remote work is here to stay, which means virtual desktop infrastructures are more important and necessary than ever. Fortunately, Cisco Rapid Deploy Bundles are making this transition and adoption easier than ever.

To learn more about VDI and Rapid Deploy Bundles, including our current promotions and opportunities, head over to Cisco.com/go/VDI.