The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted every aspect of our life, right from the way we commute and work to the way we conduct business. While it still seems impossible to lay down a perfect prediction of how the steady-state outcome is going to be, one thing that we all can be sure of is that remote working will play a significant role in organizations going forward.

As several organizations are shifting out of the traditional confines of physical office space towards hybrid work ecosystems, it can be challenging to administer the security, manageability, and infrastructure requirements. Consequently, it makes more sense for business leaders to rely on End-User Computing (EUC) technologies to manage such environments. VDI and DaaS have come up as a solution to all the challenges that enterprises face while implementing or expanding work-from-anywhere solutions. VDI solutions are handled and maintained by the in-house staff, while DaaS is an entirely outsourced solution handled by a third-party vendor.

What is Cloud VDI?

DaaS (desktop-as-a-service) is also known as cloud VDI. Here, third-party providers create hosted virtual desktops on their cloud servers bundled with all the necessary pre-installed applications deployed on the customers’ end-point devices. DaaS or Desktop as a Service is a more pocket-friendly option for enterprises supporting remote workers and their need to access all the enterprise applications securely from anywhere. Besides, much of the burden is taken off as DaaS providers offer entirely managed desktops.

Over the past few years, several industries from medical, legal, accountancy, manufacturing, and other spaces have adopted DaaS and experienced significant growth as a result. In fact, from a Gartner’s report, we can see that DaaS will likely see revenue growth of $1.9 billion by the end of 2021 from its earlier valuation of $616 million in 2019.

VMware and Citrix are the big players in the market that make significant contributions to the VDI space. Many new companies have also joined the space, trying to deliver the best solutions to different industries. Usually, desktop-as-a-service providers partner with Citrix and VMware to offer completely managed or customized services to their clients.

Benefits of DaaS

Some of the main benefits of DaaS are:

Cost controlling: This has to be one of the most sought-after benefits of the model. The users will not have to invest in servers, licensing, or desktop hardware. DaaS ends the investment cycle associated with desktop hardware, servers, and licensing by allowing users to enroll for the yearly or monthly subscription models. This reduces capital expenditure which can be utilized for other value-added initiatives.

Agility and scalability: The dynamic nature of desktop as a service enables businesses and enterprises to scale up or down as and when required quickly. Depending on the needs of the business, users can choose to bring the hosted desktops online or push the newer applications through a hosted estate of desktops.

Continuity of business: The desktop is continuously available, along with centralized storage and backup of data making it an excellent alternative to the existing disaster recovery options. The companies can continue operating even when there is any unforeseen event or other disasters, like the current pandemic situation.

Flexibility and accessibility: With DaaS, employees can access their desktops, applications, and data over the Internet through any end device like laptops, PCs, smartphones, and tablets from anywhere and at any time. This offers employees greater flexibility and the freedom to structure their work times when they are most productive.

Security: DaaS takes over the real concerns regarding data security from the enterprises. Critical data is stored within a data center infrastructure and is regularly backed up in an environment with high levels of protection. As data isn’t stored on a local device, there is no chance of data loss. DaaS providers also ensure that the data is encrypted and is accessible through tight authentication protocols.

Cloud VDI: The Current and Future of Businesses

Cloud VDI is the current and future of businesses. To establish that, we can stress the following points.

• Low utilization of resources: Cloud VDI is much better when it comes to pooling all resources to enhance the utilization of the devices and reduce costs.
• Data security: Guaranteeing that the data on the PCs has an effective backup and can be immediately restored whenever there is any disaster or failure is the most significant differentiating factor of the cloud VDIs.
• Desktop management: Cloud VDIs are capable of centralizing desktop management, although it is a complicated task. The desktop as a service provider takes it as a primary task to enhance on-demand access to the desktops from any place.

The need and demand for cloud-hosted desktop services are building traction and are expected to grow even more going forward. In fact, a survey titled “Are Desktops Doomed? Trends in Digital Workspaces, VDI and DaaS” conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) supports the statement.

Some of the major findings of the survey include,

• Security is among the top priorities for businesses and IT professionals, and 79% of the survey respondents believed that VDI and DaaS are more secure than the traditional desktop models.
• 40% of respondents said that they are already working with VDI and have aggressive expansion plans. Besides, 60% of the organizations that don’t use VDI are already on the verge of implementing it.

Hosted virtual desktops sure look attractive and sensible primarily from a financial perspective. But the earlier predictions regarding the rapid growth of the DaaS market didn’t go as expected. That doesn’t mean that DaaS models won’t witness a rise in their popularity now. It’s just that there are a few hindrances to their adoption as large companies will still need time to convert to a DaaS model. On the other hand, companies that aren’t heavily invested in the traditional desktop infrastructure can easily migrate to DaaS. Hence, it might take a little longer for the DaaS market to match the hype.

FAQs

What is the future of VDI?

Considering the inception of VDI over a decade ago, it has made significant progress as a top desktop solution for several businesses. The traction can also be attributed to big giants like Citrix and VMware, who have successfully helped organizations eliminate their operational and performance challenges.

The VDI market is still evolving and trying to be aligned with the current market requirements like faster desktops with flash storage and high-end graphics processing.

Is DaaS the same as VDI?

VDI and DaaS have some clear-cut differentiating factors. In DaaS, applications and desktops are hosted either on a private or a public cloud, whereas in a VDI, the workspace is hosted on the private data center of an organization. DaaS is also quite flexible when it comes to deployment as geographical location does not matter, but in VDI, the data center has to be in the vicinity.

What is DaaS in cloud computing?

Desktop as a Service or DaaS is a virtual model of deployment of desktops in which the VDI technology gets hosted on a cloud. Organizations can deliver desktops with cloud hosting to their employees with the help of this model.

Is DaaS the future?

Undeniably, DaaS is the future. Many companies resort to permanent work-from-home models, and DaaS helps replicate the office hardware infrastructure and offers several other benefits.