NMERB moves to cloud VDI to ensure timely, trusted benefit payments

The New Mexico Educational Retirement Board (NMERB) administers benefits to more than 165,000 members who depend on timely, reliable payments— making system dependability mission-critical. However, its aging on-premises data center and VDI infrastructure were impacting employee productivity, placing a burden on IT, and lacking the level of security NMERB required. Aligned with a state-wide cloud-first strategy, NMERB migrated to Omnissa Horizon 8® running on AWS WorkSpaces Core. With better security and support, a modern, intuitive user experience and increased overall productivity, this cost-neutral, joint cloud solution from Omnissa and Amazon now serves as a potential blueprint for IT modernization efforts for other state agencies.

The mid-size state agency with big ambitions

Ensuring a secure future for New Mexico’s educational employees—and issuing monthly payments worth more than USD 100 million in total—takes prudence, care, and dedication. NMERB is always looking for ways to improve the efficiency of its operations, as well as the productivity of its people, so that it can continue to provide excellent service to its retirees and working members. As a financially independent agency, NMERB maintains its own technology environment and operations, while collaborating with the state’s Department of Information Technology (DoIT) for select services such as network infrastructure.

Aging infrastructure undermines reliability and productivity

“When it comes to paying out pensions, there is no room for error,” says Kevin Swinson, CIO, NMERB. “Paying pensions on time is essential for retirees. Our systems must be exceptionally dependable, as any failure would disrupt livelihoods and impact the broader local economy. Everything has to work. Always.”

However, NMERB’s aging VDI infrastructure across its two data centers was putting pressure on IT’s ability to deliver. Much of the hardware was nearing end-of-life and would require significant investment to refresh. The Horizon 7 VDI environment running on this legacy infrastructure was also outdated, leading to severe performance issues—including high latency of up to 2000ms. These delays caused screen freezing and slow responses, even during basic tasks like opening email, frustrating end users.

Thin-client setups were also fragmented, with over 30 different configurations in use. This complexity made it difficult for IT to maintain consistency and reliability across desktop environments for investment managers and support staff. Furthermore, contractors accessed NMERB systems via personal devices and VPN, raising security concerns and making it harder for IT to enforce control or deliver a consistent and dependable user experience.

NMERB also needed to ensure that all employees had reliable access to real-time collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams and Zoom for communicating with stakeholders, agencies, and schools. “New Mexico is the fifth-largest state by area,” says Swinson. “Our people rely heavily on video conferencing, and we needed a virtual desktop solution that could consistently support webcams, microphones, and other peripherals.”

Lean cloud VDI delivers performance and value

In line with the DoIT’s statewide cloud-first modernization initiative, NMERB decided to move away from its traditional on-premises Horizon 7 VDI deployment. While DoIT is building its cloud strategy around Microsoft Azure, NMERB—leveraging its financial independence—transitioned to Omnissa Horizon 8, delivered entirely in the cloud on Amazon WorkSpaces Core.

“We had two choices: invest heavily in building a new data center to meet our high availability and redundancy needs, or design a streamlined cloud architecture running Horizon 8,” says Josh Craft, Senior IT Lead at NMERB and project lead for the initiative. “Staying with Horizon—now in a modern, cloud-delivered model—was the natural next step.”

NMERB built a lean, cloud-based environment on Amazon EC2, using one EC2 Linux server running Horizon Edge Gateway, and two EC2 Windows Servers running Horizon Connection Server. “The great thing about this setup is that we’re truly just running two connection servers,” says Craft. “From a cost perspective, that’s a big deal. We avoided a significant infrastructure outlay while still achieving the performance, availability, and security we needed.”

To deliver a more modern, user-friendly VDI experience with Horizon 8, NMERB upgraded from the legacy Windows Server to Windows 11. This gave users a familiar, up-to-date interface, while Horizon 8’s native support for collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams immediately resolved longstanding audio and video issues.

“Horizon 8 offers native support for tools like Microsoft Teams,” says Craft. “That solved our conferencing challenges straight away. And with Omnissa Horizon® Blast Extreme display protocol in Horizon 8, users now get a smooth, responsive experience across devices, locations, and network conditions.”

High performance and reliability for smooth pension payments

Today, 70% of the agency relies on Horizon VDI for daily operations, including investment management, member services, and support functions. Performance has significantly improved, with users now enjoying fast, stable desktop sessions, better responsiveness, and minimal lag.

“Staff have praised the consistency and speed of the new Horizon system,” says Craft. “And we’re seeing far fewer support tickets, which has really boosted our team’s productivity.”

Contractors now access secure Horizon VDI sessions ensuring that all work and data remains within NMERB’s controlled environment. “Instead of handing out VPN accounts, we provide contractors with a Horizon workspace,” says Craft. “It’s faster for them and gives us stronger protection against data leakage and the risks of unmanaged devices.”

NMERB has also been able to optimize its licensing agreements. Switching to Amazon WorkSpaces Core with Horizon has allowed NMERB to introduce both Bring Your Own License (BYOL) and Bring Your Own Protocol (BYOP) options.

“Upgrading to Amazon WorkSpaces Core with Horizon has been cost-neutral for us, while delivering a vastly improved user experience and greater manageability,” says Craft.

“Our adoption of Horizon 8 in the cloud aligns with DoIT’s cloud-first priorities and reflects our shared commitment to modernization, security, and resilience,” adds Swinson. “For current and future retirees, that translates to greater confidence in our systems and in their financial future.”

A model for modernized IT across state agencies

Among mid-sized state agencies in New Mexico, NMERB’s project is now seen as a reference architecture and a practical, cost-effective path to modern, secure cloud desktop environments.

“NMERB’s adoption of Horizon on Amazon WorkSpaces Core solves a common and complex challenge: how to modernize public-sector IT infrastructure without breaking the budget or requiring deep cloud expertise. We were able to move quickly because we have our own funding and governance,” Swinson says. “Other agencies can pursue cloud modernization through DoIT’s Azure-based offerings, but for those exploring AWS, our journey offers a proven alternative path.”

“This is our gift to New Mexico,” he adds. “Josh and his team did extraordinary work to make this happen. It has had a huge impact on our people at NMERB, but more than that, it lays down a path others can follow. I believe this opens doors for many agencies across the state. That is something Josh and the entire team can be incredibly proud of.”