Who Uses Virtual IT Labs Software?
Corporate sector: Organizations use these tools for training and educating employees. Simulations are particularly useful for junior employees, who might need additional training or new employees who need some onboarding until they’re comfortable enough to take on actual projects.
Education sector: Virtual labs can empower teachers to become more effective and increase their impact while reducing their workload over time. Virtual lab solutions enable institutions to do everything from preparing students better with lab exercises, to taking entire degrees online.
Mechanical engineering industry: Mechanical engineering sector tackles problems that involve visual-spatial elements, sometimes at the molecular level. To reinforce learning about material properties, virtual labs allow players to experiment with various materials in a three-dimensional simulated world. Virtual IT labs help in creating a hands-on, immersive, learning environment for the learners where they can physically see and spatially manipulate materials and their properties.
Construction industry: Construction simulation in virtual IT lab software can be used for construction planning and scheduling for architects, engineers, contractors, and designers. It assists them in visualizing construction sequences and reviewing site progress across the project lifetime.
Challenges with Virtual IT Labs Software
There are some drawbacks to virtual training labs, especially if introduced into a workplace setting that isn’t already technologically savvy and tuned in to the latest innovations. Here are a few challenges to keep in mind:
Limited engagement: Learners who are still in the process of acclimating to a technology-heavy work environment may not enjoy online training or may have difficulty appreciating its advantages. Virtual training labs are a new, innovative approach to learning, and navigating them well is a skill in itself. Some workers may find the shift from traditional to virtual learning experience to be jarring.
Need for prerequisite technology skills: Some workers may need general technology skills training before they feel comfortable using virtual training labs. Offering prerequisite technology skills training may lengthen the process for rolling out virtual training labs and can make the support staff feel burdened with questions on how to use them.
Unrealistic or irrelevant simulation: It’s essential to create virtual experiences that are relative to the learners’ career paths, interests, or day-to-day work environments. Otherwise, learners will find the virtual environments disengaging or irrelevant, and they won’t be able to gain complete exposure from the training. For instance, organizations can create virtual training sessions for their remote employees who are learning how to navigate a new software that has been implemented to help them with their routine work.
Technical issues: By their very nature, virtual learning environments and platforms are subject to technical issues, such as network, security, and bandwidth glitches. It is crucial to make sure that the organization is aware of the kinds of issues their virtual training platform is most likely to experience so that they can prevent them from happening or quickly resolve when the issue arises.
How to Buy Virtual IT Labs Software
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Cloud Management Platforms
If a company is just starting and looking to purchase its first Virtual IT Lab, or maybe an organization needs to update a legacy system--wherever a business is in its buying process, g2.com can help select the best Virtual IT lab for the business.
Digitalization has necessitated the adoption of virtual training software and platforms. But with so many options available, it has become more complex for businesses to select a virtual training provider that suits their organizational goals and strategy.
Taking a comprehensive overview of the business and identifying pain points can help the team to produce an RFI, a one-page list with a few bullet points describing what is needed from the virtual IT lab.
The checklist serves as a guide that helps in determining both necessary and good-to-have features including budget features, number of users, integrations, security requirements, cloud or on-premises solutions, and more.
Compare Virtual IT Labs Software Products
Create a long list
An initial list of potential virtual IT training labs software should include any products that meet the company’s basic feature requirements. At this point, buyers should just be aiming to get a sense of the options that meet essential needs. The following lab types must be looked at while deciding on the company’s ideal lab setup:
Cloud labs: A cloud lab is a marketplace and SaaS platform through which one can rapidly configure and have on-demand access to a virtual training environment on a cloud through a fully automated self-service portal and within a few minutes. Cloud-based IT labs offer substantial benefits to training teams like automation and ease of lab creation and management, instant worldwide scalability, cost control, the ability to directly connect with learners, and more. Moving to the cloud should not require a hefty investment of the organization’s internal resources. For maximum benefit, it is important to ensure that the IT lab vendor offers the ability to import the organization’s existing virtual machines to their platform, allowing the IT labs to work on the cloud exactly as they do on-premises.
Hardware labs: With hardware labs, there is no layer of virtualization between the application and the physical server. A physical server is available for each learner so there isn’t any sharing. A hardware lab may be well-suited for a buyer over a cloud-based solution due to other reasons as well. For instance, some users need systems with real graphics cards or access to real-time processing that isn’t available in the cloud. Some customers may require each user to have hypervisor access to a system. Another advantage of hardware can be the cost. Hardware can provide cost savings since the organization pays a daily fee for the physical server regardless of how many virtual machines (VM) are run on it, while in lab configurations each user needs access to many VMs.
Custom labs: Some vendors offer the benefit of customizing virtual IT lab solutions to meet the requirements of the organization. Custom labs are tailored to meet the organization’s training requirements without limiting functionality as opposed to pre-made labs. It offers the choice to modify course materials easily to meet user requirements.
Create a short list
After a long list has been created, it’s pragmatic to look at each product in more detail to determine if it will meet the needs of the company’s employees and customers to narrow down the list. This should include evaluating additional features of each product (say availability of the lab in multiple languages for non-English speakers), beyond the ones identified as essential to determine if that additional functionality would further enrich the learning experience for the users.
Conduct demos
Demos provide an opportunity to buyers to see how a virtual lab works in engaging their employees, prospects, learners, and more. It is lucrative to request the vendor for a live demo of the virtual lab to see the platform in action. Buyers also have the option of comparing and trying out various virtual IT labs software that are available free of cost.
Selection of Virtual IT Labs Software
Choose a selection team
When choosing a virtual IT lab software, it is important to involve any relevant stakeholder who might be using the product to ensure that the software will meet everyone’s needs. This likely includes employers or managers who can decide on the appropriate course material and the IT team that supports the organization’s training requirements.
Negotiation
After narrowing in on a preferred product, it’s time to negotiate a pricing package. Buyers must consider the pricing model of the software, such as whether the seller charges a flat monthly fee or, more commonly, charges a fee based on how many users would be utilizing the product. Also, the buyer can consider negotiating a discount in exchange for multi-year contracts.
Final decision
Selecting a vendor that has a strategy aligned with the enterprise’s directions and objectives will accelerate the growth of the organization. Here are few factors to consider while making the final decision:
Compatibility with industry standards: In case the buyer decides to go for a cloud-based virtual IT labs solution, the final decision should be made after ensuring that the vendor’s solution is fully compatible with IaaS and virtualization standards. It is imperative to be cautious about working with vendors that require compatibility with non-standard hypervisors, restructuring or reprogramming the labs, or on-premises solutions. This type of investment on the buyer’s part can get them locked into the vendor’s cloud platform, restricting their capability to scale according to future needs.
Full stack of benefits: Buyers should insist on a “full-stack solution” to correlate costs directly to consumption. It must be ensured that the vendor’s solution gives them the ability to efficiently clone and share environments. A virtual classroom should provide the same instructor-student experience as a physical classroom. A high-level user experience solution should include the following features:
- The ability to automatically send login credentials to users once they sign up for the course.
- A simple way for learners to check that they are set up correctly before starting the course.
- The capability to monitor and support from trainers to learners as they experiment with the labs.
- The scope for the learners to chat with the instructor or with each other during live sessions.
Technical support: The process of troubleshooting technical problems is the last thing a buyer should worry about. Virtual IT training lab solution providers must assist users with 24/7 monitoring and technical support to resolve issues that users might face while accessing and using the labs.
