itopia Cloud Automation Stack (“CAS”) is a Cloud Desktop management and orchestration tool for IT professionals to manage and deliver Cloud Desktops on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP).  CAS enables IT professionals to quickly enable end-users, via CAS Admin Portal, with secure access to their corporate data, applications, and resources on any device at anytime.

After the Desktop environment has been fully configured, the IT professional will receive a list of temporary passwords for end-users. Upon the first long-in, the user will be prompted to input the password, and users will be required to change the password upon their first login. Once the user is setup with an RDP client, he or she will be able to login with their credentials.

To get started with Cloud Automation Stack, you just need to sign up for itopia and GCP on GCP Marketplace. Once registered, you are redirected to the CAS Portal. During the provisioning of a customer's environment, a prompt will appear to choose a Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Project, or create a new one. Once CAS is deployed to your GCP Project, you can begin provisioning and deploying cloud delivered virtual desktops.

To use an itopia provisioned Cloud Desktop, a user needs to have a desktop provisioned for them and a broadband internet connection. For optimal performance, the local connection should have 250 kbps of bandwidth per user. However, 150 kbps per user will suffice. Latency of under 100 ms is recommended for a good user experience. A user will also need an RDP client that can be downloaded here providing their username.

End-users do not have administrator rights. By default, end-user rights are locked-down on itopia CAS Cloud Desktops. CAS administrator. can restrict end-user access to only those applications and data (folders and files) required by the end-user to perform their job. CAS administrators are essentially the IT staff for their end-users -- optimizing their Cloud Desktops by ensuring the proper applications are installed, folder permissions are setup, security groups are configured, etc.

itopia Provisioned Cloud Desktops are persistent. Thus, when a user logs off, all application and session data is saved.

Through CAS,  IT professional can configure Snapshots with retention policies in order to accomplish an effective backup solution. Additionally Microsoft Volume shadow copies can be configured for free on Windows instances.

To migrate an IT environment, an IT professional must first login to itopia and create a deployment in the system. Once the deployment is created, itopia sends an automatic welcome email to you since you will be migrating to itopia + GCP Cloud Desktops. Those e-mails contain a link to run the Discovery tool at each user’s workstation. This can be done by the end-users themselves, however, some administrators like to do this themselves. Once a user runs discovery, they will get a list of applications on their machine. That user is then asked to indicate which applications he or she uses. That data is then transmitted to the administrators through itopia CAS. The IT professional then has the option to audit each user’s discovered information to prevent a blind launch. The IT professional can audit users, applications, security groups, folders, servers, workstations, printers, and network nodes. Once the IT professional is ready to launch to the cloud, itopia will guide them through the migration process and notify them when this is complete.

CAS Management Portal is a single pane of glass management suite that allows IT professional to discover, provision, migrate and manage their deployments’ cloud hosted desktops and servers.
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The Management Portal allows IT professionals to manage the migration, provisioning, and day to day operations of their cloud hosted desktops. In the portal, IT staff can manage user access, create new user accounts and edit the existing ones. The deployment settings can be controlled as well including printing access, users, application installs, application assignment and restriction, and application uninstall, security groups, local drive access, network shares, enable password force complexity, reset passwords, enable remote app, etc. Through the portal,  IT stuff can also access deployment information, users, applications, notifications, audit logs, reports, deployment insights.
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Users are charged a monthly or annual fee dependent on their selection when subscribing to a paid plan.